Haphazard and Precious
by Nynaeve1723
Summary: A collection of pieces written from all major characters' POV after Buffy's death in The Gift.
1. She Should

DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon...etc., etc., etc. ... Mutant Enemy...

so on, so on, and so on ... Bottom line: not mine.

**A/N:** It's been a looooooong time since I wrote in the Buffy fandom. This story is an old one, but, as wasn't around when I started writing fic, I'm posting them here for the first time. Feedback is always welcome, always remembering that much of what you will find in my Buffy fiction was written when the show aired and thus reflects the reality _at that time_. For that reason, some events will not match up with happened on air _after_ I had written a particular story.

**Series notes (please read**): This set of twelve vignettes and an epilogue was written between the 5th and 6th seasons. Each vignette is short and told from the point of view of one of the characters Buffy touched. They can be read in any order.

**She Should (Anya)**

Dust settled. It always does. Cuts closed up. That's the way it happens. Bruises faded. Their colors are never permanent. Lives, with shudders and jerks, pauses and rewinds, went on. Almost.

No one said her name. When Angel came up, tangled in his grief, snared in his fury, held fast by his undying love, we all just talked about "her". It was the best any of us could do. Angel couldn't stop saying her name.

At first, everyone went about saying what they should have done differently, how things would have changed ... if only. Giles stopped that. "She" wouldn't have wanted us to, he reminded us.

"She wanted me to live. For her. We all owe it to her," Dawn had added, her voice flat and bitter, like storm clouds across the moon.

We buried her on a day when the sun shone. Angel and Spike stood, beneath heavy cloaks, underneath a near-by tree. Neither of them could deny her the sunlight she had loved, the sunlight in which it seemed to her she so seldom walked. All of us knew it was

a farce. We committed her body to the unending night of ground.

We ached and we cried and we wondered who would be called next. We waited for her until Giles told us it was unlikely she would come to Sunnydale. His time as a Watcher had ended he said on a dark night in the worst Spring of his life. He settled down to be a watcher of a different sort - Dawn's father, as her own apparently couldn't be bothered.

The rest of us tried to stop seeing evil lurking around every corner. We tried pretending that with her death, the vampires and demons had gone too. Willow and Tara took summer classes. Xander went to work each day. Spike quivered around the edges of the group, not knowing where he fit, but keeping his promise to Buffy to protect Dawn. No one had the energy to stop him. In truth, no one wanted to. We'd all seen how much he'd lost. His tears had fallen first. We all took turns patrolling though.

On a day, about a month after her death, a day much like the one on which we'd buried her, Xander reminded me of the ring he carried in his pocket. Funny, but he did - carry it in his

pocket, that is. Almost as if he was waiting for the right time to ask again, to sink to one knee and say all the mushy things. I don't know if there will ever be starry-eyed romance in our

lives again. Somehow, it would feel wrong, like cheating, having something she can't have ever again, something she gave up for all of us. But it's all right.

The look in his eyes when he opened the box made me ache. Maybe I'd forgotten, or changed my mind his face said. Maybe without the 'thrill' of helping the Slayer, I wouldn't find him interesting anymore his eyes told me. Maybe I didn't love him I thought I heard his heart whisper as it pounded in his chest.

"I love you," I reminded him as I held out my hand. I closed my eyes and lived in the feel of that ring slipping onto my finger. My life had made a full circle. I caught the gasp in my throat and swallowed it. The gasp of remembering that her life would never be a full circle, that she'd never had the chance. Not like the rest of us, anyway.

"You ... um ... didn't - " he hesitated, "I mean, I thought ... maybe ..."

I smiled at him and wondered if he could see the film of moisture shining in my eyes. "I didn't think it would be - so soon after ..."

He kissed me.

"Every time you kiss me, I feel a little more human," I confided.

"You _are_ human," he told me, with a half smile. All of our smiles were measured in fractions.

"I'm trying," I replied. I looked down at my finger where the diamond sparkled. "Do you think it's all right?"

He knew. "We won't tell anyone for a while."

I nodded. I didn't need to tell anyone.

A few weeks later Dawn was in the shop with me. Giles had gone to the bank and Dawn was reading. I sat down across from Dawn and began going over inventory sheets.

"You should go ahead with it," she said.

I looked at her. She had put the book down and was staring at me. At my hand.

I slipped my hand into my lap. "Wi- wi-with what?" I stammered.

Dawn smiled at me, still only a fractional smile, but one with more peace than we'd seen in ... since _then._ "You. And Xander."

"What about Xander and me...I?" I asked, trying to sound diffident.

She raised her eyes to mine. "You should get married. Soon." Her voice rustled, silk on wheat, soft, dry, gentle, yet scratched and flawed by the passage over her vocal cords.

I considered stalling her, lying. A white lie. One to make things more comfortable. But none of seem to be able to do that any more. Her death made us honest with one another. All of us.

"We're waiting," I explained.

"For a better time?" Dawn asked.

I nodded.

"Don't." She was almost commanding. "We have to stop pretending we're living our lives. We're not."

I looked at her, wishing for Giles. "What do you mean?" I asked at last.

She sighed. "She told me the hardest thing was to live in the world. None of us have lived in it since that night. It's like we're shadows - or - or - those robots, like the one Spike had built. We say we're living. We do things. But we don't feel any of it."

I thought about that. I stared at my hands and listened, in my head, for the sound of my heartbeat. I used to do that all the time after Cordelia's failed wish trapped me here. I used

to curse each time I heard it. Now, I longed for that sound, the sensation.

"We all have blood coursing through our veins," Dawn said when I remained silent. "But none of us are doing anything with it. She died ... _Buffy_ died, gave her blood so we could live. We

have to stop wasting it."

I reached across the space between us and put one of my hands on hers. "You're right," I agreed. "But it takes time."

I didn't hear Dawn's muttered reply.

Dawn told them all a few weeks later, having tired, I guess, of waiting for us to start living again.

So, here we are. Summer is almost over, but the days are still bright and sunny and mostly warm. We're getting married in the same sunlight she would have liked. We're having a picnic

afterwards because she always liked picnics and there just weren't enough of them in her life.

Giles is giving me away. Dawn is my maid of honor and Willow is Xander's best woman. Tara is here and Spike hides beneath the shade trees. It's like nothing I'd ever dreamt of and I wouldn't change it for anything. It's perfect. Almost.

I glance around and see the people to whom I am bound by ties of friendship, passion, and love. And blood.

The cuts have healed. The bruises have faded. And we have moved beyond a past that will never be over. Almost.

The justice of the peace asks for the rings. I turn to get Xander's from Dawn and to give her my small bouquet. I whisper, "She should have been here."

Dawn smiles. It's a whole smile. Almost.

"She is. She's in all of us," Dawn whispers. "Buffy is always here."

END


	2. For This Reason

DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon...etc., etc., etc. ... Mutant Enemy...

so on, so on, and so on ... Bottom line: not mine.

**A/N:** It's been a looooooong time since I wrote in the Buffy fandom. This story is an old one, but, as wasn't around when I started writing fic, I'm posting them here for the first time. Feedback is always welcome, always remembering that much of what you will find in my Buffy fiction was written when the show aired and thus reflects the reality _at that time_. For that reason, some events will not match up with happened on air _after_ I had written a particular story.

**Series notes (please read**): This set of twelve vignettes and an epilogue was written between the 5th and 6th seasons. Each vignette is short and told from the point of view of one of the characters Buffy touched. They can be read in any order.

**For This Reason (Spike)**

Hey, I always knew I'd go down fighting. Sure as hell never thought it'd

be on this side... or for this reason

---Spike, "The Gift"

I made you a promise. If I hadn't, I'd have come to this part of the cemetery at sunrise, and let it wash over my face. I'd root myself to the foot of your grave and watch the flames start. They'd begin at my fingers, I think, and probably the top of my head. The fire would race up my arms, catch at my toes and cut my legs out from under me. I'd howl until the conflagration ate my voice. The words would shake the leaves of the willows that surround you, echo in them, and whisper back down on my ashes. The last piece of me to go, the slowest to catch, the hardest to immolate would be my unbeating heart. But nothing in this corpse of mine could resist the flames and eventually, in what might feel like a lifetime, yet would really be seconds, it would explode into the dust you left of my existence. It wouldn't be a long death, it would hurt like bloody anything, but it couldn't be worse than what it's like without you. 'Cept I made you this little promise, made it the night you sacrificed yourself for 'Bitty Buffy'. And, despite the predictions of a few sorry minions, the world didn't end as scheduled.

So, I come at night and sit. And smoke sometimes, but mostly I just stare at the ground. We let them put you in there, had to hold Dawn back so she wouldn't throw herself on top of the box - coffin. Sorry, can't bring myself really to call it anything prettier than what it was - four sides, a top, and a bottom of wood makes it a box. We let some undertaker set you in it, fix up your face which was still breath-stealingly beautiful in death, and then we all stood around and watched in silence while someone who never knew you talked about ashes to ashes and dust to dust. And, yeah, we held Dawn back, flailing, screeching, sobbing her eyes out for want of you. The rest of us were just quieter about it, but we were all right there with her over it.

It was all quick-like, felt as if there should have been more, as if we should have been calling out to the whole world what you'd done for it. Again. Seven of us, seven who knew what you really were, who understood the gift you'd given to each and every person still walking around on this miserable rock. Again.

Was your life anything but apocalypses and darkness?

It was, once, back before you got all chosen. Angel was there that day, saw you, watched it happen, watched the sunlight hide itself from you forever. He fell in love with you. Used to whine about it when he was Angelus, used to make fun of his poor soul-having self who went and fell head-over with the stupid, fucking Slayer, of all girls! Joked about how pathetic, whiny Angel got jealous of your 'white knight' because he could see you in the sunlight. Talk like that always got Dru going, turned her all sympathetic and mushy, made me tune out. God, Buffy, wish I'd paid more attention to my old grand-sire back then, wish I could picture you like that - young, free, smiling in the sunlight. But I think I get it now. It's what you gave Dawn - the chance to have a life in the sunlight, to live without one eye over her shoulder wondering what lurks around the next dark corner.

Angel was in a bad way when he came back up here with Willow. The two of us might have made quite a pair - double immolation ceremony if it weren't for the two that came with him. Finally felt sorry for the big poof. Guess I understood for the first time what he lost when he left you. Watching him I figured out, too, why he had to leave you and just how much he feared this day would come and he wouldn't be around.

I think everyone pretty much surprised him when they told him I was staying.

"People change," Cordelia reminded him. She's come a long way, that one has. You all did, but her. Well, more than her hair has changed. Know Angelus never gave her a passing thought, but when she said that to Angel her eyes were all full of meaning only the other English one got. Was he really your Watcher for a while? Makes Rupert look downright wild.

"He's not a person," our Angel reminded her. And if words could have staked, I'd be a pile of dust in your hallway.

The girl only raised her eyebrows at him. Don't think anyone really believed at first that she could make him back down, but he did.

"He was - is - wa... whatever, to Buffy," Willow said, both confused and defensive.

"And is to me," your little sis added. Girl gets more like you every day.

Even carpenter boy nodded.

Still and all, it was hard on Angel. At least the rest of us were here. We know how it went down. Know why you had to do it. There's a small peace in that. Very small.

Seeing Angel, watching him die a little more, I thought back over this journey of mine, the path my life and afterlife has taken. In one of life's grand ironies, your Angel and I have loved the same woman, twice now. Though, not really, I suppose. It's Angelus who loved Dru and only as a prize, a possession, a circus sideshow freak with her second sight. And it's Angel who loved you, but I remember quite well your effect on Angelus. Much as he tried to hate you, he knew the Angel that loved you was in there somewhere still. He never could quite shake that. I thought it was weakness - his. Never knew until this last year that it was strength - yours.

When Dru found me in that alley I was a man reviled by the people he valued most. She took that and turned me into her playmate, her consort and I reveled in it. But she never saw the better parts of the man she'd turned. She saw only the evil she'd created. It was all anyone saw for a long while.

Like to think the better parts of who I was carried over. Love and poetry. I may not have had a gift for words, but the feelings were always there.

My love (and only in death, and only in solitude do I get to say that) you saw the things no one else ever did, in everyone around you. In Willow. In Xander. Even in Rupert. Especially in the poof and finally, in me. You saw and you reflected them back at us, let us catch glimpses of the best we could be and something in you - your smile perhaps; maybe your eyes; maybe the way your heart wrote its messages on your whole face - made us want to see more, to see ourselves the way you did. You let our actions tell you who we were more than what we said. You believed in us every step of the way, even when you didn't want to, even when you tried to hate us, me. You couldn't. You made us who we are. And in some ways I'd like to think we helped you find out who you were.

I sit here and think of the girl I never knew and the one I did. I remember the first time I ever saw you, wanting to kill you because you were the Slayer. A word. Bed time bogey-girl to frighten bad little vamps. Almost as bad as being sent to your room without supper it was when your sire or some other knowing vamp would tell you all about the one girl in all the world, chosen, destined to fight our kind. You were never like any other Slayer and it became personal. I started to hate _Buffy Summers_. That made you more than a word, a myth. I hadn't felt anything except easy contempt for any mortal in so long you made me step back and wonder why, wonder how you'd gotten to Angel so deeply and how you drove Angelus buggery even when he claimed you didn't. That's where it started for me. That need to understand you, that started me loving you. Not quite sure when that happened. Dru knew it long before I did.

I know you always thought it was the chip, making me behave and all. Maybe it was. But somewhere in there all the years hate twisted 'round and became love just the same. I once told Angelus to kill you a body had to love you. Never realized until it was too late that once a person loved you it was impossible to kill you.

I wish I'd known the girl before. I really do. I would have liked to see the sun catching all the light in your hair, would have liked to hear you laugh with a pure joy, without the ever present knowledge that evil waits in every dark, or not so dark, space around us. I would have liked to see you smile at me, just once, without the sadness that lived in your soul.

I knew you'd never look at me the way you look at him. Knew it going in, unlike poor Commando Boy. Didn't care either. I just wanted to see in your eyes that I was worth something. Not as a plaything, not as a killer, not as the butt of a thousand jokes, but as someone worthy of your respect, your trust. I did all I could to prove to you my love wasn't because of the sodding chip in my head, but because of you, because of what you meant, still mean. When you let me in to your house... you knew what I meant when I said there was no barrier. I could _hear_ your heart beating beneath your flesh. Didn't know... didn't even guess I'd never have the chance to hear it again.

I told you I knew you'd never love me. When I said it, I knew I was going to die, again. In my mind, the world was going to go on that night, but without old Spike in it. You were going to take out Glory and I was going to rescue the Niblet, but somehow I wasn't going to make it. That was all right. That felt good to me. I thought you'd hold Dawn, stroke her hair, dry her scared tears, and say a few words about my final sacrifice, maybe even let slip that you'd really cared more than anyone had known.

When I said it, you turned. And I know now what I saw in your eyes. It wasn't William the Bloody bad poet or Spike the notorious vampire or even Spike the pathetic shell of his former vicious self. I saw the man I'd been looking for, the one I'd hoped you might love. I know now I had a tiny piece of your heart and it's enough. Over the years you'd given us all pieces of your heart, your soul, and Dawn is the biggest part of that. I know what you gave me when you counted on me to keep her safe.

Doc asked me why I cared. I told him I'd made a promise to a lady. I intend to keep it, Buffy. I'll protect Dawn, forever if it comes to that. Not because of the chip, never because of that. Because you died for her. Because you died for all of us. Because you died for love. You gave the world the gift of your heart, your love, your very soul. And because she's you. She's the you I never got to know. So I'll love her like you loved her. And protect her like I couldn't protect you.

For this reason I watch your grave at night and hope that wherever you are the sun holds you tightly in its warm embrace and that you know nothing of darkness, apocalypses, or the evil which marked your every hour as the Slayer.

You saved more than the world, Buffy. You saved a boy who died in an alley over a century ago. You saved him. A lot.

END


	3. The Softer Side

DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon...etc., etc., etc. ... Mutant Enemy... so on, so on, and so on ... Bottom line: not mine.

**A/N:** It's been a looooooong time since I wrote in the Buffy fandom. This story is an old one, but, as wasn't around when I started writing fic, I'm posting them here for the first time. Feedback is always welcome, always remembering that much of what you will find in my Buffy fiction was written when the show aired and thus reflects the reality _at that time_. For that reason, some events will not match up with happened on air _after_ I had written a particular story.

**Series notes (please read**): This set of twelve vignettes and an epilogue was written between the 5th and 6th seasons. Each vignette is short and told from the point of view of one of the characters Buffy touched. They can be read in any order.

**The Softer Side (Willow)**

Ohgodohgodohgodgodgodohohgod...

I stumbled in Tara's arms when I saw you, still, silent.

Ohnogodnoohgodnononogod

Don't have another coma, OK? It's the only thing I could think and how much I hated myself for saying it to you. It seemed so wrong - after. After. Am I ever going to get away from that word?

Oh God, Buffy. You gave up for one tiny second, not even a whole second, really, and this is how you make up for it? You atone with your blood. For five years you taught us all about love and courage and selflessness and in one fraction of a moment you lose your grip on that and_ this_ is the outcome.

Oh, Buffy...have another coma. Just don't be dead. Don't be gone. Don't...

It was like being at a movie, hearing those things in my head and hardly knowing they were my thoughts. Nothing seemed real. Tara was back. She was holding on to me, keeping me from collapsing to the ground, like Spike. Tara back. Spike mourning you. Giles staring at the event he feared the most, the one thing in this world that could still make him cry. Xander and Anya clutching at one another, her head on his shoulder, his eyes cutting to her face every minute or so, as if he was afraid she would vanish, leave him bereft as you had done. And Dawn. Dawn. Pressing her hands to her sides, weeping and moaning in pain that started at the cuts in her sides and went through to the soul the monks gave her. It wasn't real. It couldn't have been. We'd survived the Master, Angelus, that thing that lives beneath the Hellmouth, Adam - everything and you'd always won. We never really thought it could end up any other way. Deep down we were never prepared to lose you.

I'm the one who has to tell Angel. I don't want to. Not having you in my life hurts enough. I'm terrified what the weight of his eyes could do to me. I know before I see him that he'll know. Angel will be the one who would be ready and it will be all the worse for it. Shock and denial numbed us, let the grief in little by little. He isn't going to have that.

I didn't want to tell him, but there was no one else. Maybe Giles, but somewhere inside Giles will never forgive Angel for loving you, for letting you love him and Angel knows that. Xander? No. Just no. We couldn't even have considered anyone else. No one else has always been there. It falls to me.

Oh God, Buffy. The weight of losing you, losing something in me that was your place, trying so hard to hold onto all of it and knowing it will fade. There isn't any magick for this. No escape.

Xander drove me down. I hated being away from Tara so soon after she came back to me. It was clear Xander was uneasy over leaving Anya, whose concussion had been moderate, but somehow it had to be just us. We started this journey with you. We had to be the ones to end it.

"The three of us against the world," Xander remarked as we drove.

"Sometimes against each other," I added.

He smiled, a reflex curving his lips up, belying the snort that huffed out of his mouth. "That never mattered. It was always temporary."

I nodded. Nothing ever drove us very far apart. I still think nothing ever will. And then I remember and the razor slides through me again and my eyes bleed tears that want to bring you back.

"You remember ... you know ... the first time you met her?" He asked. The question drew itself slowly from his lips.

I nodded again. "Yeah," I said. "How could I forget?"

"She was - " he didn't finish.

"Hot?" I ventured. The way Xander felt about you no longer hurts at all. I didn't realize it until that moment. The same time which drew us all together and held us so tightly healed any wounds we ever made on each other's hearts and souls.

He shook his head. "Well, yeah," he admitted. "But it was more than that. She was ..." he couldn't find the word he needed, no matter how much he searched. I think he was afraid to find it.

"She was Buffy," I told him.

"Yeah." It was only the one word, spoken in a voice close to broken by your loss. We'll never be the same without you. We don't want to be.

"She was the first person who ever looked at me and saw _me_," I said.

"Hey," Xander protested.

I smiled at him, a smile from our mutual childhood, full of memories and a lifetime of forgetting, too. "The first person who hadn't pulled my hair every day for a month when I was ten and wanted it longer," I reminded him.

"Did that ever work?" He asked.

I shook my head. "Never made it grow any faster," I confided. "But it did make my scalp pretty tough."

How was it that we could talk like that? I wanted to stop, tried to stop, but then I realized you died so we _could_ remember everything, so that we could keep you alive in our hearts, live our lives and have our memories. All of them.

After a few beats, Xander said, "I know what you mean, Wil. She could have - should have - been like - the others..."

"Cordelia? Harmony?"

He nodded.

I shook my head. "But she never was." I paused. "And it was never pity. I never felt like she sat down with me that day because she felt sorry for me."

"She always made her friends feel ... like friends," he concluded.

"No one at Sunnydale really took her for what she was. They couldn't. But she took them for what they were."

"Class Protector," he murmured.

"She could never have been anything else."

We were silent the rest of the way, except for my giving Xander directions.

But I thought of you the whole time. And I know he did, too. I thought of you the day I met you. I almost hated you on sight, except I've only ever really hated two people. You were with Cordelia and I thought I knew what that made you. I thought you were like her. I thought you saw me like she saw me, that when I'd gone away, you'd banter with Cordelia about my too-straight hair and my overly pale face and my 'softer side of Sears' wardrobe. You never did. You never had to tell me you didn't. Instead, you sat down with me, started things over, and asked for my help getting caught up in school.

I asked you once why you did that. You told me there was already enough darkness in your life that you needed the light in my face. And you added that you were worried people like Cordelia could take that away from me. But you never thought I was weak, just untested. From you, Buffy, I learned to live in the darkness and not be swallowed by it.

Through all the years, so few by most people's measure, you were the sister I never had. We fought; we apologized; we shared; we loved; we cried in each other's arms over impossible loves gone wrong. We hurt one another because people do that sometimes. We always made our way back to one another though because family - and you were, always will be - does that, too.

There is a girl in a hall in a building that is little more than rubble now, timid, ready to scamper like a mouse under the sharp gaze of a hunting owl. She doesn't know what is to come. She doesn't know that the new girl she is staring at will love her, value her, transform her. She doesn't know that she will owe that girl everything good in her life, including that same life itself. If she had known, Buffy, she might have turned and fled because it's overwhelming. The ways she will change are too much to imagine. But even more your loss will swamp her, capsize her heart, and nearly drown her in grief. She would have run and you would have chased after her because it was who you were.

At the center I'm still that girl you saw. Yet I've become so much more. Everything that was always there, locked away, hidden, trembling with fear of what others would say or do - you gave me the strength, the permission to find those things inside myself. You brought me Oz ... and Tara. You brought me Xander, who has always been a part of my life, but never in the best way until you came along. You made Giles and Jenny part of my world. I glimpsed the darkness of Angelus and Dru and Spike and found that love can conquer almost anything. Because of you there is Dawn. Most of all there is ... was ... you.

I will never be the same without you, Buffy. And I will never forget the moments that shaped me, us. My memories of who I am all have you in them. My future - all of our futures - will constantly demand what you would do in whatever situation we find ourselves. We will take the gift you gave us all and honor it. But not a day will pass when that doesn't hurt.

So, I, who began the journey with you, go to lay your heart and soul at the feet of the man you could never stop loving. I will break his heart and watch him shatter. He'll know why I'm there. My face won't be able to hide it. The voice I can barely force from my throat when remembering how you died will reverberate in his head before the words make any real sense to him.

And after I break his heart, after his world falls apart around him, I'll remind him of everything you were. I'll make him look at me for proof. I'll tell him to remember all of us as we once were, to see us for who we are now and remind him that is your doing and that as long as we exist, as long as we live, you won't truly be gone.

And I'll cry as I say it because you are gone and it will be years before I believe my own pretty lies.

END


	4. Empty

DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon...etc., etc., etc. ... Mutant Enemy...

so on, so on, and so on ... Bottom line: not mine.

**A/N:** It's been a looooooong time since I wrote in the Buffy fandom. This story is an old one, but, as wasn't around when I started writing fic, I'm posting them here for the first time. Feedback is always welcome, always remembering that much of what you will find in my Buffy fiction was written when the show aired and thus reflects the reality _at that time_. For that reason, some events will not match up with happened on air _after_ I had written a particular story.

**Series notes (please read**): This set of twelve vignettes and an epilogue was written between the 5th and 6th seasons. Each vignette is short and told from the point of view of one of the characters Buffy touched. They can be read in any order.

**Empty (Giles)**

That night, I stood against a doorway and watched the world shudder. Lightening flashed as the ground trembled. High above I could just see where you stood with Dawn. At first, I did not comprehend the meaning of the sudden motion above. When it struck me I gasped and started toward the platform, not knowing why, but wanting to protect you one last time.

Instead, I watched your form disappear into the portal. Shortly after, it closed and I watched you fall through the night. You had done it again, Buffy, saved the world, averted an apocalypse. I wanted to feel elation, pride that once again you proved your mettle. I only felt empty.

I staggered toward you. We all did. I saw the sight I've known most of my life I would see, one day or another. My father and grandmother warned me, schooled me in one brutal fact. Slayers die. Watchers are left behind.

Slayers fulfill their purpose. Watchers are left empty.

Somewhere in my mind I always hear you telling me that's two facts. Your voice is lively with a hint of sarcasm, but also gentle with a greater measure of love.

The day we buried you was the worst of my life. Worse even than the night you died. Burying you was the end. Gazing down into the void in the earth where they would lower your coffin felt like looking in a mirror. All that dark space waiting to be filled again. My mind whirred uselessly in numb circles, knowing only that the small, ridiculous, persistent hope that you, of all people, could cheat death again - that hope - would be buried with your body under the dirt they would shovel onto your coffin.

The dirt was silky and cool, smelled of early summer in my hand. We all threw in the requisite handfuls and watered them with bewildered tears. Spike, smoky even in a heavy coat, and Willow held on to Dawn, who fought, struggled, begged to be with you.

After it was over, when we'd hunted down the demons and beasts we could and buried you, I thought of returning to England, where your loss could become a memory to me, not a daily challenge. To say my work here is done sounds ludicrous and yet, it is. I am no longer a Watcher. I could take my place amongst past Watchers, possibly in the inner circle of the Council, due to the way in which you handled them on their last visit here. And the unassailable fact that you bested a god. It might fill my days, and nights, but never my heart. Watching your friends, your sister, I quickly realized England would be far emptier than Sunnydale ever could be.

That I decided to stay seemed to astonish, relieve, and genuinely please he others. Somehow, along the way, you turned me into their father as well as your own. Now, I smile to myself when I ponder that. I never sought that responsibility but I find the unlooked-for life distracts me, fills in some of the tears and rents your death caused in my soul.

I look back and realize as my Slayer grew, found her place inside her own skin, so did her friends until you all formed a formidable force against any evil. You loved one another, loved me, made a place in my heart for yourself and in that abundance of love, you were the strongest Slayer ever known. If I truly gaze into the mirror of the past, I see how you changed me, filled a life that was books and rules and dead languages and made it an actual life.

Now that life, filled with your energy, your way of looking at the world, is woven with emptiness, woven with the absence of you. I told Quentin Travers once that they fought the battles while you waged the war. By that time, I'd come to realize how fulfilling that was, fighting the war with you. It's over and if it's easier, not to fight, it's also so very empty, Buffy.

In that last battle, I killed Ben. I wonder if you know that. I wonder if you would have understood that I was never a hero, Buffy. It doesn't matter now. The emptiness makes sure of that.

Tonight, I lean my head into my hands and listen to the silence that surrounds me. My open eyes scan the floorboards beneath my feet and the emptiness of this house, your house, enfolds me.

Dawn is upstairs, in your room, asleep. I hope. I've given up trying to make her sleep in her own room. She crawls into your bed each night, your stuffed pig, Mr. Gordo I believe, clutched in her arms.

The two of us barely dent the loneliness that seeps from the walls and, like unseen vapors, shrouds us.

I sigh. There are decisions to be made, of course. I should be the one making them, but I find, for once in my life, I can't. Your father is unreachable and in truth, we are all glad of it. Dawn is ours, in our hearts. We will fight to keep her here, if we have to, all of us.

I have thought of selling this house finding one where the emptiness would not be tangible. I think maybe if Dawn, if I, did not see you in the shadows, hear your steps around the corners, maybe we could learn to fill the spaces. Maybe if we were somewhere else we would want to. We're not ready now. I know we may never be.

For now the emptiness is all we have left and we're all loathe to give it up. The emptiness proves to us the girl who once made our lives shine really was.

You told Dawn to tell me you finally understood and that you were 'OK'. I can only hope it was the truth, that as the night wrapped itself around you, high above the ground, as you stared into the darkness that was up there, you did know your true gift. You were the light that shone in our darkness and you extinguished that light so that darkness would not be absolute.

Death was your gift. And yet, not a day passes when I don't wish it could have been mine.

END


	5. Used to Dream

DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon...etc., etc., etc. ... Mutant Enemy...

so on, so on, and so on ... Bottom line: not mine.

**A/N:** It's been a looooooong time since I wrote in the Buffy fandom. This story is an old one, but, as wasn't around when I started writing fic, I'm posting them here for the first time. Feedback is always welcome, always remembering that much of what you will find in my Buffy fiction was written when the show aired and thus reflects the reality _at that time_. For that reason, some events will not match up with happened on air _after_ I had written a particular story.

**Series notes (please read**): This set of twelve vignettes and an epilogue was written between the 5th and 6th seasons. Each vignette is short and told from the point of view of one of the characters Buffy touched. They can be read in any order.

**What I Used to Dream (Angel)**

I used to dream about you every night. Your smile, the fall of your hair, the sound of your voice, the trickle of your laughter filled my mind and kept me fighting the darkness which surrounds me.

I dreamt of holding you, kissing you, making love to you even.

I dreamt of marrying you. In a church I held your hands, said my vows, and kissed your mouth. You glowed in snowy white, your golden hair a crown above the pearls of your smile. With fearful solemnity we made our way down the aisle, husband and wife, legally one as souls had become long before. We stepped outside and I waited, searching your eyes for the horror, the fear, the innate knowledge that the day which meted out our bliss also marked my end. The sun never burned me, claiming you instead. My dream turned nightmare in the flicker of the flames.

For two years I've told myself it was only a dream, a dark dream, sheer as the fabric in that illusory veil and just as fragile. All this time, it lived in the hidden recesses of my mind, out of reach in the lurking cold of fear. I understand now, at last, my dream. While I walked in the suns of Pylea, you burned in the wrath of a god.

We turned a corner, strode into the courtyard, the refugees from Pylea, happy souls returned to their proper dimension. We laughed and smiled and jostled for the humorous honor of declaring, as we burst through the doors, that there was no place like home.

The words died in my throat when I saw Willow. Her head down, her shoulders rounded, looking small and alone. And defeated. She raised her face and in her eyes, in their rims so swollen from crying as to have turned purple, I saw the words I've feared since the first moment I saw you all those years ago. I felt them in my soul where I've known they'd come since the first night I dreamt of you all those same years ago.

She never said them. She didn't have to. Behind me, Cordelia breathed, "She's dead".

"Willow?" Wes asked, his voice asking her to negate Cordy's awful susurration.

I watched Willow's mouth open, once, saw her swallow past a throat tight with grief, and knew I'd remember forever the tears that slipped from her eyes in mute response.

I stepped toward her, wondering what my own face looked like, glad for the first time in who knows how long anymore that I can't see my own reflection. I saw it in Willow's face and that was enough. She began to shake silently and I gathered her to me, holding her in arms that will never feel you in them again.

"I'm sorry, Angel," she sobbed. "So sorry."

I shushed her and swayed her gently, as if she was a child awaking from a bad dream.

When she had regained control of her voice, we all sat down and she told us what had happened. Cordelia made coffee that grew cold as we listened. Willow told us of Dawn's unwelcome power as the Key, of the battle you all waged against the worst opponent any of you had ever faced. She wept with intermittent softness in telling of your love for the sister-who-wasn't- but-is. She stopped, staring down at hands that clutched themselves, and took a deep breath, before reaching the conclusion of her story, your story.

"It ... she had to close the portals." Willow wiped away tears that flowed from her swollen eyes. "She couldn't - once before ..."

"She couldn't do it again," I said, staring at Willow's bent head.

Willow shook her head slowly.

She looked up again. "It was her gift - the Primitive told her so."

The rest of us exchanged looks.

"OK, sorry, but 'huh'?" Cordy asked.

Willow swallowed. "Death - was her gift. At the end, Buffy understood what the Primitive meant. She told Dawn."

We exchanged looks again.

Wesley spoke at last. "The Primitive? As in the First Slayer?"

Willow nodded.

"Did - did Giles take her on a vision quest?" Wes asked.

"After ... after ... oh God... after her mom died." Willow took a deep breath.

I looked at the faces around me. Fred sat quietly, looking at her hands, her face stricken, sharing, I supposed, our shock and grief. Gunn looked grim. He knew Buffy only from stories, but he could never have doubted what she meant to all of us. Wes and Cordelia were both pale and Cordy trembled slightly, as if the room around us was cold.

"Makes the visions seem peachy, as gifts go," murmured Cordy.

"Willow?" I asked, drawing her eyes to mine.

"She was OK with it, Angel. She told Dawn to tell us all." She paused and for the first time, the tears had stopped. "And I think - I think she was."

"She couldn't kill her sister," Wes observed.

"And she couldn't let the world end," Cordy added.

"Hell of a choice," Gunn said.

We were silent for a moment. "Buffy's whole life was about making those choices," I stated. "It shouldn't have been."

"She was the Slayer," Willow reminded me.

I glared at her.

"As much as she used to hate that, she hasn't ... not for a long time, Angel. It's - it was who she was and ...," Willow finished with a shrug. "She made the world a better place and she knew that."

I looked at the floor, seeing the carpeting with new eyes, eyes that would never see you again. I took a deep, unnecessary breath through lips that would never kiss you again. Did you know that, Buffy? Did you really know your life was more than just darkness and monsters?

"Xander!" Wes exclaimed, making me look up.

I saw, in my peripheral vision, Willow's head swivel from my direction to his.

The boy who loved you is gone, Buffy, and in his place is a man who never left you, who loved you in a way that the sixteen year old he once was would never have believed would be satisfying. Willow gave him a rueful look. And I suddenly realized the girl she was is gone, too. You changed them, my heart and soul, as much as you changed me.

"Everything OK?" She asked.

He shrugged. He held up a cell phone. "Giles - checking in. Checking on us."

Willow nodded. She raised an eyebrow.

He gave her the ghost of a smile. "Tara's still fine," he assured her.

"And Anya?" She added.

He nodded.

Cordy looked back and forth from the two of them. After a moment, she looked down. "Never mind," she muttered. "I do _not_ want to know."

Willow took my hand and squeezed it. "We should - there's Dawn ... and ..."

I nodded.

She stood up and we stood with her. I hugged her again.

"Thank you," I whispered. "You could have just called."

She pulled away and shook her head. "Never. You always deserved more than a phone call." She paused. "You were everything to her. Even when she tried to put it in the past."

As they left, Xander put an arm around her waist. She rested her head on his shoulder and their voices drifted softly toward us as their feet carried them away. True love isn't always romantic. They found that because of you, Buffy.

Two sunrises have passed since Willow's visit. The moon is coming up and from the roof of the Hyperion I can see where the shoreline fades into the dark sky. I think of all the years I dreamt of you and the dreams that have filled the last year, the better parts. The dreams of Shanshu, of the day I would walk to you in the sunlight and kiss you until we're _both_ breathless, fade like the shoreline in the distance.

Five years ago losing you would have ended me. But I owe you more now. I owe you not dreams but realities. Five years ago I wouldn't have wanted to go on without you. Now I want to prove I'm everything you saw in me. You will always be in my soul, my love. You are the reflection I cannot see. You are the dream my heart cries out for in the darkness. And somehow, I believe you'll answer me.

END


	6. Anything Heroic

DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon...etc., etc., etc. ... Mutant Enemy...

so on, so on, and so on ... Bottom line: not mine.

**A/N:** It's been a looooooong time since I wrote in the Buffy fandom. This story is an old one, but, as wasn't around when I started writing fic, I'm posting them here for the first time. Feedback is always welcome, always remembering that much of what you will find in my Buffy fiction was written when the show aired and thus reflects the reality _at that time_. For that reason, some events will not match up with happened on air _after_ I had written a particular story.

**Series notes (please read**): This set of twelve vignettes and an epilogue was written between the 5th and 6th seasons. Each vignette is short and told from the point of view of one of the characters Buffy touched. They can be read in any order.

**Anything Heroic (Xander)**

"You see me do anything heroic - I learned it from her"

---Xander, "The Gift"

There was something I wanted to tell you, Buff. Planned on it after we'd stopped Glory when we were all sitting around munching popcorn and pizza and popping in a mindless video so we could all fall asleep sprawled around your living room. I knew the world wasn't going to end, so I figured there'd be plenty of time. After. We were going to laugh and smile and hope there were no dreams of the First Slayer and the cheese guy this time. I was going to thank you. For saving the world. Yet again, that is. For keeping it all together and bringing us through ... stuff safely.

I was going to thank you for never loving me back like I thought I wanted you to.

And you were going to be the first person I told about Anya. I knew you'd smile and say, "Marrying an ex-demon ... valid lifestyle choice, Xan." Then, you were supposed to hug me and whisper in my ear how happy you were for me and how you'd better be invited to, no, _in,_ the wedding.

It was going to be back to business as usual - demons and things that go 'slurp' in the night, beware.

Dawn would go back to school with quite a tale to tell, the parts of it she could, that is. She was going to argue with you about doing homework, going to class, and helping you out at home. We were all going to keep getting over your mom, little by little. You were going to start thinking about going back to school in the fall. Giles was going to go to England and tell the Council what had happened. If they had any sense (and it's questionable), they were going to tremble in their polished leather loafers at the strength of their number one girl.

We were going to continue with the part of life called growing up, becoming adults in all the ways we dreaded when we were younger.

Now, after, Willow and I exchange looks a lot of the time. We know. I don't know how we know, but we do. Words aren't spoken because they're pointless. From the beginning, it was us. Us and Giles and no one else. Miss Calendar came later; Cordy and Oz came later. Even Angel - we didn't know what he was, how he fit, or everything he would mean, until later. After that came Spike and Dru and Faith and Wesley. Then, Riley and Tara and somewhere in that, Anya. And Dawn, of course, Dawn, who's always been in our minds, but wasn't really there and no matter how good the monks were, somewhere inside, I think the four of us always knew it. The four of us, since the beginning, since you first came to Sunnydale.

We learned to define ourselves, discovered who we could be (and who we couldn't) with you. When you went away, left us that one summer, we wondered if we could go on. We did. We did because we thought you would have; we thought when you came back (we never doubted you would - well, we tried not to) you'd see it, be amazed, understand the changes you made in us. But, in the end, it was almost like you just expected us to. Inside, you knew what you'd created in us and it never surprised you that we lived up to it.

I was going to tell you all of this, Buffy, and be heartfelt with the thanks. I told Anya once that when I'm with her, I see the man I could be, that in her eyes I'm the things I want to be. I see a man who is nothing like his parents, a man who is responsible, who seeks to care for those around him. I see the man who can be a husband and, someday, in the future, a father. I see a man with will and courage, who knows when to be afraid and who knows fear can be mastered.

And when to run when the fear can be mastered, but the opponent needs a good ass-kicking from the Slayer. I see those things in her eyes.

In your eyes I always saw the boy you met when you stumbled and dropped your bag at his feet. I saw the boy who wondered why in hell you carried around a wooden stake. I saw the boy who wanted to deny what he'd seen in the faces of the undead. But mostly, I saw the boy you trusted and loved in a way that became precious to me because you saw, in the boy, the man I wanted to become but didn't even know it until you arrived. In your eyes, I watched myself grow up. I found out I could be heroic. I learned I wanted to be heroic, and not in a guitar-playing, mindless bimbo magnet sort of way.

I wanted to be what you were - real.

Since the world didn't end, since you wouldn't let it, I had a promise to keep. I had a ring to give the girl I love. She's not you, Buff, and I'm glad. Didn't think I'd ever say that. She loves me; she wants me; she'd sacrifice herself for me and me alone. As much as you loved us all, your heart belonged to the fight. In the end, it consumed you.

I've kept my promise and Anya wears my engagement ring on her left hand. It will be something small, the ceremony, and you'll be in our hearts and souls the day it happens.

I told Anya, on the day I asked her to marry me, on the eve of your death, that anything heroic I do, I learned from you. I'm doing the most heroic thing I can think of these days. I'm living the life you gave back to us to keep.

END


	7. You Can't Take Her

DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon...etc., etc., etc. ... Mutant Enemy... so on, so on, and so on ... Bottom line: not mine.

**A/N:** It's been a looooooong time since I wrote in the Buffy fandom. This story is an old one, but, as wasn't around when I started writing fic, I'm posting them here for the first time. Feedback is always welcome, always remembering that much of what you will find in my Buffy fiction was written when the show aired and thus reflects the reality _at that time_. For that reason, some events will not match up with happened on air _after_ I had written a particular story.

**Series notes (please read**): This set of twelve vignettes and an epilogue was written between the 5th and 6th seasons. Each vignette is short and told from the point of view of one of the characters Buffy touched. They can be read in any order.

**You Can't Take Her (Dawn)**

"Let someone else deal with it," was all Giles said when Willow asked about the things that had come through the portal.

Everyone looked relieved and guilty at the same time. We all knew you would have gone after them, chased them down, slain them. We all looked around and tried to care about something other than each other, something other than the fact you were gone. We couldn't.

They took me to the hospital and the doctors stitched up my cuts. They never asked how or why. It was kind of a crazy night and I think doctors in Sunnydale get used to some pretty weird 'injuries'.

I wish it were as easy to close up the gashes in my heart. Wish they could just sew everything up, stick a bandage on it, and call it good. One by one, stitch by stitch, dry my tears, make me forget everything that should have been different. They did a good job on me; I probably won't have any real scars, almost like it never really happened. I wonder if they would have been as good on my soul.

Numb me with a 'local' and get to work. Needle stick, draw the surgical thread through, pull it and like the best medical science has to offer the time I let Harmony into the house never happened. Second stitch - it tickles a little bit despite the anesthesia - and that time I was six, when I broke the crystal skates Dad gave you? Didn't ever happen. Third stitch - I'm still crying; I haven't been able to stop - and the night I accused you of not caring Mom had died.

That _so_ never got said. And on and on, all the things, big, small, and in between, all the ways I made your life difficult, put you in danger, made you come after me, all those things stop being a part of our lives. Right until the end, when they slap the bandage over their handiwork and you never jumped into the portal; you aren't lying, cold, still, dead, in the morgue. Yep, work some of their medical miracles on me and I'd be as good as new. You'd be here and I'd screw it all up again by cutting class, flunking tests, arguing with you and you'd get exasperated with me and yell at me and ... good as new.

But it's not. Instead, I'm bleeding dry, drop by drop. No one can see it, no one thinks to look for it, because they're all doing the same thing.

At school, I sit in class and listen to the sounds coming out of the teacher's mouths. Wa wah wa wa wa wah. Like in the 'Peanuts' specials. The conference with the principal comes back to me. Plink.

At home, I stare at my homework and think it must be some ancient language Giles would understand. Mom made you take me school shopping with you and Giles and I saw a dead body. You got in trouble. Splash.

Over dinners, I eat, tasting nothing. I once told you I liked Faith better (_after_ she'd tried to turn Angel _and_ thrown in with the Mayor). Gurrlp.

Brushing my teeth until my gums bleed sometimes, I stare in the mirror and can't believe I see myself at all. I accused you of being a howler monkey disguised as my big sister. I was only half-kidding. Sssphht.

Combing my hair in the morning, I pull tangles without feeling it. I snuck off to the morgue to see Mom and on a day when you should have been able to do nothing but grieve, you had to slay. Fwwushh.

Drop by drop, the litany of my sins rises in my brain as my soul bleeds itself. Wouldn't Glory be proud?

Time passes, slowly, as though I can feel each minute stepping by, wary of treading on me, but inexorable in its pursuit of the end. I look at your picture - a lot. I sit in your room, hold your things. I finger your dresses, put on your perfume, paint my nails colors you liked. I put out pictures - of you and Angel when he surprised you at your Prom. Of Riley at the beach with you. Of you and Willow and Xander, hugging, smiling. Of you and me, when we were younger and you were teaching me to ice skate.

You are fading. The sound of your voice, the way you laughed, how you used to tease Giles. Only your words - 'the hardest thing is to live in this world. Live. For me'- are still as clear as the moment you said them. Only in them do I lose the sense of desperation, the feeling that I'm losing you. Only in them does time sew up what a god took away.

Getting up in the mornings and making my bed, I grumble about Giles's being so anal. I got taken by Harmony's minions and you came after me. Pull the thread through.

Riding to school five days a week, I watch the trees and note the ones whose leaves change colors and fall and the ones whose green needles remain all year. You nearly sobbed when you told me they could take me away from you. Gather up the torn places.

Listening to friends gossip, I pay a fraction of my attention to them, but I smile and laugh and manage to bitch about Kirsty. When you turned sixteen, I made you breakfast in bed with no help from Mom. You ate it all anyway. Stitch.

Sitting in the magic store, I watch Anya help customers and enjoy the way the light flashes off her engagement ring. You fled Glory once she knew what I was, no matter how much it grieved the Slayer within to retreat. Run the thread under the last stitch.

Lying in my bed at night, I dream in the places between wake and sleep. You held me in a hospital room and mingled blood from your hand with blood from mine. You told me it was Summers blood, just like yours. Then, you took that blood and sacrificed yourself because the ritual had started and Death was your gift. Knot the thread.

Breathing, swallowing, blinking, sneezing, I hear your voice telling me you understand and it's fine, telling me to live. Glory took me and you took me back. Snip the thread. Be proud of the scars - they mean we won; they mean we did all we could.

I told her she was going to lose, that she couldn't take you. I was really only trying to be brave, but deep inside I didn't think she _could_ take you. I thought you'd find a way.

She couldn't, Buffy. She couldn't take you. In her way, she took your life, but, still, I was right: she couldn't take _you_. You never gave up, never stopped fighting. You were the sister who'd always protected me, who'd always loved me until the very end. She couldn't take away the things that made you _Buffy_.

You gave those gifts - your honesty, your integrity, your fierce devotion to family and friends - to us. You gave those things, gave your life, to a world which will never know what you did and you did it because you couldn't _not_.

It's that simple.

She couldn't take you, not in the end.

END


	8. Alone

DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon...etc., etc., etc. ... Mutant Enemy...

so on, so on, and so on ... Bottom line: not mine.

**A/N:** It's been a looooooong time since I wrote in the Buffy fandom. This story is an old one, but, as wasn't around when I started writing fic, I'm posting them here for the first time. Feedback is always welcome, always remembering that much of what you will find in my Buffy fiction was written when the show aired and thus reflects the reality _at that time_. For that reason, some events will not match up with happened on air _after_ I had written a particular story.

**Series notes (please read**): This set of twelve vignettes and an epilogue was written between the 5th and 6th seasons. Each vignette is short and told from the point of view of one of the characters Buffy touched. They can be read in any order.

**Alone (Faith)**

Hey, B. I'm standing here, looking down at your ... headstone. Never thought it'd be me doing this. Kinda guessed it was gonna be the other way 'round, with you up here in the soft afternoon sunlight and me six feet under. Never thought you'd lose. Not even when I threw in with the Mayor. There was some tickle back in my brain that just _knew_ Buffy Summers would come out on top.

You're probably wondering - unless all those preachers are right and you're watching over us all from Heaven; in which case, you already know - why I'm here. Council sprung me. Don't know how exactly and Giles won't say. Can't say as I'm upset by it. It's hard to fight vampires, demons, and hell beasts in prison. Although, I gotta say, a girl can use all that alone time to take on a few of her own demons. Angel promised them all I'm better, but they still watch me, circle around me like little kids near the lion cage at the circus. You know what, B? I don't blame them. They lose you and get me in return. Deal doesn't seem quite right, does it?

I asked Giles how come they didn't just wait for the next Slayer, how come they got me out. He used a lot of big words in his explanation, but I think the bottom line is you died the once and as far as whatever power it is that calls Slayers, that did it for you. Now, it's back to only one girl in all the world. The Chosen One ... first time I said it aloud I looked for you. Couldn't believe it was me I was talking about.

I looked around for you, wanted to laugh, wanted to fix it, call us The Chosen Two, like it used to be. Gotta say, B, it made me tear up a bit. Not for you, so much. Sorry. Well, yeah, for you, but not the you that jumped into that portal (and man, B, if there is an afterlife, you and me, girlfriend, we are gonna talk about _that_). It was for the girl who got chosen a bunch a years ago, a girl who never wanted this gig. I thought I knew what being alone was, what loneliness was. Now I know what you learned the day you were called. It's three words. The Chosen **One**. It's the loneliest fucking thing I've ever thought.

I've been alone most of my life. Never knew my dad. For all I know my mom didn't even know who he really was. Knew my mom and wish I hadn't. She was a lonely woman and she taught me you cure loneliness by crawling into a bottle, slapping your kid around, and bringing home anything that wears pants and has to shave its face in the morning. She never seemed to catch on that those things aren't much of a cure. Took me a good long while to see it myself. The guy part, anyway.

Didn't have much in the way of friends growing up either. The good kids, nice ones, the ones like you and Willow, their parents knew what my mom was from the start and wouldn't let their precious babies play with me. Guess I can't blame 'em now. Not like I turned out much better than expectations. I hung out with other kids, on the edges of the groups, wherever they'd let me. Found out the tougher I was, the more easily they let me stay. The more 'balls' I had, the more they seemed to like me. They didn't though, not really. I was just another freak who didn't fit in. Somewhere along the line, I chose not to fit in. Figured I'd managed long enough without belonging that I didn't need it.

God, B, it hurt so much to see you, a Slayer, the only other girl on the planet who was just like me, and you didn't want to be different. You wanted to fit in. I'd come to Sunnydale thinking I was finally gonna belong someplace, be part of some exclusive, two-girls only club, even though I didn't even know I wanted to, and instead, there you were. You tried so hard to fit in, to have this normal life. And you came so close. I even tried to pull you away, to make you find that angry, feral creature that lives in all Slayers, but it scared you and you always went back to the safety of your friends. You went back to where you weren't alone.

I finally got why you didn't want to be that creature, why you fought it so hard. I got that you never pushed me away, just the darkness in me, the fear, the anger, the lonely hatred. I got it when your former vamp lover was pummeling me and my brain said "at last, at last, it's all over". There was nothing left to live for. I'd driven away all the light I could have had in my life and found out that being alone doesn't make you strong, it eats you alive.

For a year or so, I wasn't alone anymore. I had Angel. Not like you. If he didn't have that agency of theirs, B, he'd be dust. He hurts that much. But I had someone who talked to me, who listened to me, who made me feel the way you must have felt - like you were worth something, like killing wasn't the only gift you brought to this screwed up planet.

Then, Giles came to the prison. Coulda knocked me down just by looking at me I was so surprised. It hit me before he opened his mouth. I knew there was only one way he'd come to see me. Angel may have forgiven me, and the rest of them may be working on it, but forgiving and forgetting are two different things. I dropped my head. I didn't want to see his eyes, didn't want to watch his mouth move. I thought maybe if I only heard it, it wouldn't be real.

He was real short about it. "Buffy is dead. The Council has arranged your release. You will return to Sunnydale with me. I am to be your Watcher and you will follow my orders."

Was all I could do to nod.

I only looked up when he kinda barked my name. His face was - Giles. You know, stern, disapproving, but with this little glimmer of understanding, like he knows what a Slayer is up against. And I don't just mean the beasties. "You are The Chosen One now, Faith," he told me. The note of pity in his voice didn't even piss me off for once.

The Chosen One, girlfriend. Funny thing - I don't want to be. It's too damn lonely. You lived with that for - what? - two years or more, before Kendra. I've been living with it for two months and I feel the darkness closing in around me each day. How'd you do it, B? How'd you fight the dark all around and never let it in? I know what happens when it gets in.

I'm reading your headstone again. I think I could trace the shape of the letters in my sleep, I've stood here so many times. You saved the world, B. You kept fighting the darkness, kept pushing it back. The last time you did it, it was because you loved your sister and your friends so much.

And now it hits me, B. You fought the darkness not because you could, not because you liked it, not because it was the only thing that bled the hatred out of you. You fought it because you loved everything that wasn't darkness.

Sun's setting, B. Does it rise and set where you are? I hope so. Time for me to get patrolling, stake a few vamps who are too stupid to figure out they should get the hell out off the Hellmouth, and then report to Giles. Believe it or not, B, I even follow orders these days. Mostly. So, girlfriend, time to fight the darkness. Be at peace, B. You deserve it.

And B? Thanks. You showed me how to do this.

Alone. And not quite.

END


	9. A Different Life

DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon...etc., etc., etc. ... Mutant Enemy... so on, so on, and so on ... Bottom line: not mine.

**A/N:** It's been a looooooong time since I wrote in the Buffy fandom. This story is an old one, but, as wasn't around when I started writing fic, I'm posting them here for the first time. Feedback is always welcome, always remembering that much of what you will find in my Buffy fiction was written when the show aired and thus reflects the reality _at that time_. For that reason, some events will not match up with happened on air _after_ I had written a particular story.

**Series notes (please read**): This set of twelve vignettes and an epilogue was written between the 5th and 6th seasons. Each vignette is short and told from the point of view of one of the characters Buffy touched. They can be read in any order.

**In a Different Life (Cordelia)**

There was nothing quite like coming home that night. I felt like it was the first time in years I really was home, like I belonged where I was and with the people around me.

Gunn wanted to go check on his guys, I could tell. Fred could hardly wait to get some of those tacos she'd longed for. Wes was eager to dive into those books we brought back from Pylea; he thought they might really help us against the evil lawyers. Angel seemed to feel comfortable in his own skin, having taken a big step in the Host's dimension; he'd found some control over the demon inside him and it invigorated him. I was thinking I might take a couple days and visit Sunnydale.

Then, we all saw Willow and life changed again. It stopped with a grinding noise inside my head and Angel's rough voice, his words bringing out what he'd always feared.

"It's Buffy," he said.

"She's dead," I added in a whisper, wanting Willow to say you weren't, just hurt, to tell Angel he needed to hurry to your side, hold your hand, smile at you, and kiss it all better. In a moment like a vision-in-reverse, I saw all the times you nearly died or could have died. I listened to echoes of all the beasts who tried to end your life over the years. I witnessed the Master and the Anointed One and the blood rushed to my head as if I were hanging upside down on that meat hook again. I felt the attack on the library that killed Kendra and took Giles. I heard myself wishing you'd never come to Sunnydale, remembered too many times I'd accused you of ruining my life.

Willow couldn't even speak. She just let tears slip from her eyes. She didn't make a sound. I wondered if there was any noise left in her until Angel hugged her and she sobbed once, deep and raw, pulled from her diaphragm and inflicted on the world.

After she'd told us what had happened and left, Angel went up to the roof. I found a room for Fred and went to look for Wes. He was sitting in his office, staring at those books we'd brought back.

"Cordelia," he acknowledged in something barely above a whisper.

I sat down opposite him.

"I've been reading - that is, looking at the ...," Wes's voice trailed off. "Bloody hell, I've been staring at the pages for the last hour."

"It's so unreal," I said. "She seemed so ... invincible."

Wes nodded. "A god, though; that sort of ritual." He paused. "Poor Buffy."

I sat silently and thought about you again, about the girl from Los Angeles who had seemed so cool to me at first. Then, I thought you were nothing but a freak of nature to be pitied by the normal among us. Now, I know there is no such 'cow' as normal and I never should have pitied your gifts as the Slayer. You learned how to save people a long time before I figured out it was even important.

I saw your young, full face, hopeful, ready for new beginnings. Over the years that face pared itself down, melted with vigilance, sculpted with the pain that marked your life. I think about your eyes that always sparkled when you were with Willow and Xander; something I never understood until recently. I think about how empty those eyes could be, how desperate, but always, how determined. I missed so much about you, Buffy, never realized until too late how much those things in you I thought were shameful were all the things I now hope I am.

You wouldn't know me anymore, Buffy, and I'm glad. Because I knew you, I know Wes and Angel. Because of Angel, I survived here and met Doyle. And have these visions. These mind numbing, head-splitting, freaky-assed, make- me-want-to-puke-or-cry-or-both visions that I wouldn't give up now for anything. I finally have what you had. I have something to give back.

I made a wish once - and geez, if I'd known how that was going to turn out in the long run (Xander Harris is getting married? to Anya?), believe me, I wouldn't have! I wished you'd never come to Sunnydale, Buffy. I ended up dead, or so Anya told me. I thought my life sucked because of you. It took me a long time to see it, but my life is pretty incredible. Because of you.

Knowing you taught me there are different worlds, within and beyond this one. Somewhere, there's a different world, one where I don't make a nice Slim Fast shake for Willow and Xander; one where I'm not a 'cow-princess' giving out the Declaration of Independence to a bunch of freaky priests and green, horny demons (they have horns on their heads) in the name of freeing the humans stuck in that place. Somewhere, there's a world where Cordelia Chase is famous; where she's rich from all her blockbuster movies; where the best looking men all over the world are lined up to worship at her feet. I hope I never find that world.

I'll live in this one and be proud I can say I once knew Buffy Summers.

END


	10. Stumbled

DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon...etc., etc., etc. ... Mutant Enemy...

so on, so on, and so on ... Bottom line: not mine.

**A/N:** It's been a looooooong time since I wrote in the Buffy fandom. This story is an old one, but, as wasn't around when I started writing fic, I'm posting them here for the first time. Feedback is always welcome, always remembering that much of what you will find in my Buffy fiction was written when the show aired and thus reflects the reality _at that time_. For that reason, some events will not match up with happened on air _after_ I had written a particular story.

**Series notes (please read**): This set of twelve vignettes and an epilogue was written between the 5th and 6th seasons. Each vignette is short and told from the point of view of one of the characters Buffy touched. They can be read in any order.

STANDARD RILEY DISCLAIMER: You don't like Riley, don't read it. You don't like

Riley, you read it, and want to flame me, you were warned.

**Stumbled (Riley)**

With a jerk of my head I caught Graham's attention. In hand signals I asked, "You still got that thing on radar?", my fingers flashing the question my voice couldn't. He nodded and pointed, then held up three fingers followed by five. About 35 meters in the direction he pointed. We kept creeping up behind it, whatever it was.

It was nothing that was in our database, but word was, this thing had been hunting in Sunnydale for a while, almost six months. It took our guys monitoring this town a while to decide it really was a demon presence, a longer while to get word to us in the jungle, and some time more after that for us to mobilize. We hadn't been back here an hour when the Commander sent us after it.

We came into a clearing with willow trees to one side. I swiveled my head from side to side, alert for any sign of the beast. I was a lot less alert to the fact that Graham had stopped in his tracks, gone stone-still. I heard him mutter, "Oh, man, oh, that's bad," before I stumbled over him.

My hands flew out to meet the ground and I felt the impact shoot through my wrists, up my arms and rattle into my shoulders. I grunted and was grateful for the soft turf beneath me. I was glad I hadn't winged my head on the granite slab in front of me. I turned to look at Graham, ready to ask why the hell he'd stopped like that, ready to bitch at him for making me fall over like some idiot. Then, I saw his eyes. I saw where they were fixed and I followed them. The slab I'd almost hit.

It wasn't real. It couldn't be. It was another dream, another nightmare. I was in the jungle, still asleep, sweating like a pig and suffering a heat induced delusion. I'd had that one before - the one where you're dead. I never get to you in time. Sometimes, I made it to you while you're still breathing and you told me you did love me, but usually I was too late even for that. This was new. This one had a headstone. With dates. And an epitaph.

"Buffy, no," I murmured.

"Oh, man, Rye, man...I'm sorry," Graham breathed.

It was real.

I don't really remember how I got to Xander's, but I did. I think I told Graham I was packing it in for the night and I'd catch up with him later. Or maybe I just meant to. He probably got the message either way when I stumbled away from him.

The sun had come up by the time I knocked on Xander's door.

He opened the door and the look of puzzlement changed to one of shock and then, quickly, one of false cheer.

"Look who's come home," he said, voice straining for good humor. "Come on in."

I walked past him, tripped I think.

"When'd you get ba-" he started to ask.

"When?" I demanded, voice hot, unshed tears shredding my vocal cords into microscopic pieces. "When did she die, Xander?"

He looked like I'd punched him. He moved backward and his face went white. The cheer, false though it had been, emptied itself from his eyes. "Sit down," he responded, pointing toward the couch.

"Who is it?" Anya called as she walked into the room. I looked over at her. "Oh!" She paused, looking from Xander to me and back again. "Would you like some breakfast?" she offered.

"He knows, Ahn," Xander told her.

"Oh," she repeated, voice flat and cold, hurt I'd say. "I'll finish getting ready," she said.

Xander nodded at her.

"When?" I reminded him.

Xander sat down in a chair. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped under his chin. When he looked at me again, it was with eyes that hurt. "About six months ago."

"Six months!" I exploded.

"Yeah," he verified with a nod.

"How?" I snarled.

He looked down. "It's a long story," he said.

"How?" I nearly yelled.

His gaze, in meeting mine, was calm, almost. "Riley-"

"Just don't tell me it was some vamp. OK? Don't tell me it was something as stupid as that," I begged.

He shook his head. "It had to do with Glory."

"That demon chick?" I asked.

Xander snorted. "She was a hell god from another dimension, actually. Demon chick would have been a piece of cake; she was ... she was another story."

I looked down and studied my hands. You used to hold these hands and it struck me then that you wouldn't ever do that again. I took a deep, shaky breath. "Was it... did she ..." I stumbled over the words until I found something that almost fit, "what kind of - battle was it?"

"Apocalyptic," Xander replied without hesitation. "Buffy saved the world."

"Again," Anya added softly, from the doorway. Xander smiled at her.

"What - I mean - God, I don't know what I mean," I stammered.

"Giles tells it all better anyway," Xander assured me. "Come with us to the shop."

"Are you sure? I kind of thought - he doesn't hate me? You know, for leaving?"

"He doesn't love you," Xander told me. Then, he grinned a little bit. "But he got it. We all got it."

"Could I have - if I'd been here...?"

Xander didn't answer. Anya walked over to him and put her arm through his. "No," she said. That was it, but the note in her voice told me not to ask more about that, told me I couldn't have. No one could have saved you.

The bell above the door jingled as we walked in. Giles poked his head out from around a corner.

"Seems like I always get to bring home the lost and wandering," Xander called out.

Giles stepped out from where he'd been standing and stared at me.

"What?" I asked, turning to Xander.

"Yes," Giles said softly, everyone ignoring my question word, "it would seem you do." Giles looked me over, up and down. "Hello, Riley. I suppose you know-"

"He was out hunting Chucky and -" Xander started.

"Ah, Chucky...yes, he does frequent the cemetery, doesn't he?" Giles interrupted. "I'm sorry you found out that way."

I stared at all of them, suddenly certain it was the nightmare again. None of them made any sense. Xander bringing home the lost and wandering? And who the hell was Chucky?

"Uh - who's Chucky?" I asked, at a loss for anything else.

"Sorry?" Giles asked. "Oh, Chucky." He took his glasses off and moved over to sit at the table. He motioned for us to join him. Xander set down the doughnuts we'd stopped for and the three of them each took one, absent-mindedly. "He's the one demon we weren't able to hunt down, eventually. He flies, you know."

"Yeah," I agreed, deciding I really was still dreaming and I might as well go along with it. "Looks like a pterodactyl or something."

"Really more of a gryffin," Anya informed me, licking icing off a doughnut.

"We, the unit, didn't have any information on Chu- it," I told them.

"They wouldn't," Giles replied. "He's not from our dimension."

"And what dimension would he be from?" I asked, humoring these nightmare visions.

"Oh, we don't really know. The portal opened quite a few gateways before Buffy-" Giles paused and his breath caught in his throat. I knew again I wasn't dreaming. "-before the portal was closed," he finished at last.

I looked at the three of them. Giles sat staring at his jelly doughnut as if it were some piece of art work. Xander and Anya held hands and looked far away. I took a deep breath - it felt like I'd been doing a lot of that in the last few hours. "I'm sorry, but this isn't making much sense," I told them.

Giles looked at me. His face softened and his eyes came back into focus. "Of course not. I'm sorry. You only know she's - gone," he said, more question really.

I nodded.

Patiently, Giles told me everything. He told me about who Dawn really was, or had been. That was what you were keeping from me at the end. You kept it from everyone but Giles so that Dawn might not find out. You were caught in a trap so tight, you almost couldn't breathe and all I did was lash out at you. God, Buffy, I'm sorry.

He told me about Glory, about her dimension, about her mortal prison being that intern, Ben, from the hospital. He told me about the Key, the ritual, and the blood. I heard the loss in his voice and the pride that at the very end you did what had to be done.

Willow came in at some point and sat down. Silently, she squeezed my hand and smiled at me. It was the typical Willow smile, hesitant at first, curving only her lips, then broadening, ever so briefly, to show her teeth, then settling back against her lips.

Giles finished by telling me, "She died doing what Slayers do, Riley."

"Dying?" I barked. They were all so ... calm. At peace almost.

"Well, yes, I suppose that is one way to look at it," Giles answered. "The barest way."

"Oh and I should dress it up and call it something prettier?"

Giles shook his head. "No. Of course not."

"Then what?" I demanded.

He looked perplexed, as if I should know the answer to this question.

"The best Slayers - and make no mistake, Buffy was the best Slayer ever known to the Council - the best don't fight because they are called to it. They don't simply kill the vampires and demons and other beasts. They protect, they _save_,"

Giles said.

"They love," Willow added.

"You see," Giles continued, "she loved Dawn so much she could not bear to lose her, to let Dawn jump. And yet she also loved all of us - her friends and really, a whole world she never knew - so much she couldn't let us die either."

"So, she killed herself?"

"She saved the world," Anya reminded me.

"We're still here; _you're_ still here because of what she did," Xander added.

I stood up. "How can you all be okay with this?"

"Who said we're okay with it?" Willow retorted.

I spread my hand out. "Look at you all! You're eating doughnuts. Anya brought over juice. Giles has got his shop going ... it's like ... like you're glad she's gone!"

Willow's face grew angry with me and her dark eyes clouded. I sensed the air tingle and then it stopped. Willow stared at me still. "That's not fair, Riley," she said, voice cold, bitter. "You just found out about this. We've been dealing with it for six months. Maybe if you'd been here, if you'd been patient with her, maybe you'd be 'glad' too!"

"Willow-"

She cut me off. "No! How dare you walk back in here and act like you loved her more than us? We were there, Riley. We - we saw what she did. We saw her body, her dead, still body. We buried her. _We_ did those things. And believe me, we're not glad we had to do them. There isn't a day that goes by that we don't hurt. I wake up every morning and one of my first thoughts is always 'Oh, I should tell Buffy about my weird dream' or 'I wonder how Buffy did on her history test' or 'I hope Buffy liked the movie last night'. And then I remember, it _hits_ me, Riley, hits me like a fist. She's gone. And I want to scream. I want to turn back time. I know this is how it had to be, but I want to make sure that one last time I told her how much I loved her." She paused and took a deep breath. "And you think I'm _glad_? You think because I can eat doughnuts and drink juice and talk with my friends that it means I - we - don't care? Get over yourself."

"I'm sorry," I murmured,

"You should be," she replied, the harshness already leaving her face. You always told me one reason Willow was such a strong person was she could never stay truly angry with anyone for long. She loves people too much for it.

"Riley," Giles spoke again, "Buffy told Dawn something - before she jumped."

"She told us to live. For her," Xander supplied.

"It's what we're trying to do," Willow took over again. "She died so we could eat doughnuts and drink juice; so that Giles could run this shop; so that I could finish college; so Anya and Xander could get married; so Dawn could grow up and have a normal life, if that's possible in Sunnydale." She stood up and came to me, putting a hand on my arm. I felt the gentleness, the healing qualities in her touch and knew it wasn't magick, just Willow. I looked down at her. "It breaks our hearts to go on without her, but if we don't, then we've taken her sacrifice and we've made it worth nothing. We owe her more than that."

I nodded and felt the tears come, the first ones I'd been willing to let out. Just a few. I'll cry for you later. When the grief can eat me up and no one else will see.

I looked around the shop, toward the training room. Giles followed my glance.

"It's all still there," he told me. "Would you like to...?"

I went without a word. I stepped inside the room and shut the door. I trained here with you, watched you train. I teased you here, told you I loved you, even made to love to you one night after everyone else had gone. And it did not involve the pommel horse. I fought here with you and thrust an impossible ultimatum in your face.

It wouldn't have mattered if I'd been here. Not to you. It would have to me. You would have known I wasn't just saying that I loved you.

Voices drift into me. Giles and Willow. He was asking if Dawn had gotten off to school and Willow promised that Tara had gotten her there. I realized the door had opened and closed.

"She went after you," Xander told me.

I didn't turn around.

"She wasn't in time. Your helicopter had lifted off and she called your name, but you must not have heard her over the noise," he added.

I still couldn't turn around.

"She loved you, Riley."

"Not like Angel," I replied.

"Nope," he agreed, "not like Angel. And not like Dawn. Not like Willow. Not like Giles. Not like me. Not like her mom. She loved you like she loved Riley. There was room in her heart for everyone, man. She just didn't always know it."

I turned. He was telling the truth. I realized I'd been holding my breath, not wanting to see any lies on his face. I shouldn't have worried. "Thanks," I said. After a moment I asked, "What did you mean you're always bringing back the lost and wandering?"

He told me about the summer you ran away, after you had to kill Angel. He told me how he ran into you in an alley before any of the others and he annoyed Giles by joking with him when they brought you to him.

I said something brilliant along the lines of "oh" and considered the odd symmetry of it.

He nodded. He looked around. "Seems like she could walk in any minute, doesn't it?"

I nodded.

"She can't," he concluded. Remorse and pain lingered in his voice, but it also held an acceptance that I was beginning to understand, if not feel. Willow was right - they'd lived without you for six months.

I hadn't.

"Chucky, huh?" I asked after a few minutes of silence.

Xander nodded. "He's a bad ass. Maybe you guys with your blasters and radar can take him out. We've pretty much been trying to lasso him - not a good idea - or throw spears at him."

"Now there's a picture," I told him.

"And it ain't pretty, my friend," Xander assured me.

"You guys got everything else?"

He shrugged. "Took us a while to care about doing it, but, eventually, yeah."

"She created some real monster fighters," I observed.

"I think she'd be proud," he told me.

I nodded.

I left not long after that. I headed to our temporary headquarters to check in. Graham saw me and gave a toss of his head. It's a guy thing, but I knew what he was asking. I shook my head. I wasn't fine. I wasn't even so-so. But I had something I had to do before I could be miserable.

I walked into the Commander's office and quit. For a long time, I fought monsters because the Initiative told me to. Then, I fought them because I loved you and wanted to protect you. In the last year, I've fought them because I was trying to forget you. But it wasn't living my life; it was a holding pattern.

See, Buffy, I never fought them because I wanted to protect the world. Not really.

Before I left Sunnydale for good, I stood at your grave. I'd come with something you gave me once, something I've always kept with me because I thought it meant I had a piece of you. I laid it at the foot of your headstone and I cried.

I cried for what we could have had and what never could have been. I cried because I never looked down. I thought I heard your voice, but was afraid I was imagining it and it was easier to think that than find out it was only in my mind. I cried because I've never loved anyone the way I loved you and I wouldn't ever again. I cried because I understood what Xander had meant.

You loved me and it wasn't good enough for me because I thought you loved someone else more.

I cried because I always had a piece of you, inside, and didn't know it until you were lost to me forever.

I started to walk away.

I looked back once and the splash of your red bandanna dazzled my eyes.

Then, I went on with my life. Willow was right again. It hurt, every single day for years. But it was what you wanted. And I never belonged in Sunnydale, never fit in with your group. The glue that held you together was never quite there for me. We all tried, but sometimes, no matter how much you want something, it's not meant to be. My life moved on elsewhere. And every time I look at my two daughters, asleep in their beds, I hope I've honored the gift you gave us.

END


	11. That's One Word

DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon...etc., etc., etc. ... Mutant Enemy...

so on, so on, and so on ... Bottom line: not mine.

**A/N:** It's been a looooooong time since I wrote in the Buffy fandom. This story is an old one, but, as wasn't around when I started writing fic, I'm posting them here for the first time. Feedback is always welcome, always remembering that much of what you will find in my Buffy fiction was written when the show aired and thus reflects the reality _at that time_. For that reason, some events will not match up with happened on air _after_ I had written a particular story.

**Series notes (please read**): This set of twelve vignettes and an epilogue was written between the 5th and 6th seasons. Each vignette is short and told from the point of view of one of the characters Buffy touched. They can be read in any order.

**That's One Word (Wesley)**

Preparation.

The watchword of any good Slayer.

A prig, a stuck-up, know-it-all prig with his head so far up his behind he should have been able to see daylight once told you that, Buffy. Said it three times for emphasis because he thought it sounded cleverer and carried more weight that way. That man, an almost-useless, humorless specimen of humanity, underestimated everything about you and failed you in every way possible. Oddly and wonderfully enough, you never failed that man, Buffy.

Time and distance began teaching me about you and about myself. And about preparation. And resourcefulness. And determination. And wit. And love.

The watchwords of the best Slayer.

The watchwords that should have been mine instead of boorishness, rigidity, coldness, and misplaced overconfidence.

After leaving Sunnydale, I roamed this country, hunting demons, seeking my own redemption for my failures on the Hellmouth. The wheels on my motorcycle hummed in my head as I rode. At first, I heard a litany of your sins, of Giles's sins and an expiation of mine. Slowly, under summer sun, against fierce winds, beneath Midwestern rain showers, the truth began to emerge in the song the tires played in my mind.

In the demons I fought (and usually ended up fleeing, at least in the beginning), I began to understand you, your need for humor, for independence, for a life free of horror and darkness, if only for an occasional hour or two. I began to value the native intelligence you brought to the duty of slaying. As books, endorsed by the Council but woefully inadequate in any real life scenario, let me down, I saw you, heard you, fighting demons, vampires, the Mayor, and I understood strategy will never be found on paper but in the hearts and instincts of warriors.

The passion you brought to your battles can neither be taught nor learned, I came to see, and it can't be contained within the rules of old men so far removed from what it is they say they fight.

I found that not all the demons I fought were corporeal. With time, I began to vanquish the ghosts that haunt my soul, to fix the flaws I had once so tightly embraced in myself. I found myself in Los Angeles, with familiar faces, old associations that weren't. Cordelia, Angel, myself - we've all changed greatly in the past two years. Buffy, you would no longer know Cordelia Chase, a fact that I know would not have disappointed you. You would like the woman she's become. You would no longer know Angel in the ways you did. I don't doubt you would only love him more, because you would find more to love in him. I hope you would barely know me. I hope you would approve of the differences.

You changed every life you touched as the Slayer. Some, like Willow's and Xander's and Giles's, you changed directly, the sun stretching down from the sky, warming all it touches. They were your friends. Others, Cordelia's and mine, most of all, you changed after you had gone out of them, the moon reflecting the light of the sun onto a dark world. Because of you we knew one another and Angel; we had a bond in a lonely city and we drifted together, from inertia at first, but in the end out of love and loyalty. We were not your friends. Not even Angel. You two never had that luxury. Still, you tied us together and together we became better.

Loyalty. Another watchword.

One I have learned.

You were flawed, Buffy, as much as any of us, but somehow you took those flaws and made them strengths. At times, those strengths came later rather than sooner and you had to make choices. You made them with a decisiveness astonishing in anyone so young. In anyone so human. In anyone at all. In anyone but Buffy Summers.

Preparation, Buffy.

What a bloody stupid man I was. What a bloody useless word.

I've learned to say things only once, Buffy, but to mean them. The cleverness, the weight is in that.

Preparation never saved the world, never averted yet another apocalypse, because without love, preparation is just so much writing on a page, so many words lost to the winds. That ridiculous prig standing in the Sunnydale High School Library could have said 'preparation' a thousand times, but without love it never would have mattered.

Love was your watchword. Love was the only plan you ever really needed. And it always turned out to be enough. Even the last time.

END


	12. Name the Stars

DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon...etc., etc., etc. ... Mutant Enemy...

so on, so on, and so on ... Bottom line: not mine.

**A/N:** It's been a looooooong time since I wrote in the Buffy fandom. This story is an old one, but, as wasn't around when I started writing fic, I'm posting them here for the first time. Feedback is always welcome, always remembering that much of what you will find in my Buffy fiction was written when the show aired and thus reflects the reality _at that time_. For that reason, some events will not match up with happened on air _after_ I had written a particular story.

**Series notes (please read**): This set of twelve vignettes and an epilogue was written between the 5th and 6th seasons. Each vignette is short and told from the point of view of one of the characters Buffy touched. They can be read in any order.

**Teach Me to Name the Stars (Tara)**

I think every good story should start with 'Once upon a time'. It's safe, comfortable, familiar. It promises, or should, a happy ending. There will be love, adventure, loyalty, maybe some humor, and above all, the good guys will win...

Once upon a time I was a little girl. I lived with my mother, my father, my brother, and, after a while, my cousin. I said 'No, Sir' and 'Yes, Ma'am' and let my brother order me around. I played with dolls when everyone was looking and climbed trees when only my mother was home. My friends were the wild animals who sat calmly when I talked to them and the small streams near our home who babbled words only I knew. They were the flowers in the spring and the fallen leaves in the winter. But best of all, I loved my mother.

I thought my mother had hung the moon and stars. She told me fairy stories that made me laugh. She would tickle me with her hair when she tucked me in at night. She would tell me to smile like the princesses in the stories she told me and promised me someday my true love would come for me and I would live in a castle made of love and filled with joy.

Once upon a time I grew up enough to go to school, a place that terrified me with its welter of children and constant hum of noise. I begged to stay at home with my mother. My brother laughed at me, but it was never like my mother's laughter. It was hard, brittle and knew nothing of fairy lands where soul mates meet by cool, blue pools and sip elderberry wine beneath soft, green trees. My father, his face a woodcarving from the totem poles we learned about and made paper towel tube copies of in art, ordered me back there. My mother promised school would become a magical place, one which would help me find the secret passage out of the life she lived.

I went to school and, for years, waited for the magic, looked for the secret passage that my mother had told me about with tears covering her eyes. I learned what I was told to and earned good grades because it made my mother smile and I liked knowing things. My friends were the trees around our playground at school, the animals and streams when I got home, and the stars at night.

Once upon a time, my mother took me to the roof of our house. We climbed a ladder. She had only told me once to be very quiet; twice wasn't necessary. I was old enough by then to have learned stillness around my father, to know not to resist, only to avoid. We laid on a quilt my mother had made when she was a girl, when she'd been waiting for her prince to come. More tears covered her eyes when she told me that. She watched the stars go by and I watched her, touched her hair and stroked her arm. She hugged me and told me she loved me and pointed to the heavens above us. She tried to teach me the names of the stars, something she had learned a long time before.

I never could keep straight the names scientists have given them, so I made up my own. I watched them wink down at me, wondered about the light which traveled so long to reach my eyes, thought about its journey and wished I could have seen all it had seen. I saw the pictures in them and named them after the world I knew and the one I imagined. My mother would laugh, a clear melody, when I told her my names. She would tell me how wonderful I was and how special. She would implore me to keep tight my grasp on my way of looking at the world.

Once upon a time, my mother died. Our trips to the roof had grown fewer and fewer as I'd gotten older. The last time, my mother had sat, holding her knees to her chest and stared into the sky. She had spoken in cryptic words I chose not to understand. A few months later she was gone. My world was empty, filled only with the tatters of a family that didn't love, only existed. As often as I could, I escaped to look at the stars. I searched and searched until I found my mother. I think the scientists call it 'Cassiopeia', but to me it is my mother, the last time she was on that roof with me.

I wandered through my days, still doing well in school because I had become old enough to understand my mother's magic and the secret passage she had longed for. Despite objections from my father and brother, I went to the university. And met my soul mate. And found the family I was meant to have.

Once upon a time, Willow smiled at me and my heart rocked in my chest. I heard the gurgle of water in a blue pool and smelled the scent of cool earth beneath green trees. I loved her from the first. I thought that was enough. Then, I saw her with her friends, with the Scoobies, and my heart understood the deepest magic, the truest love.

I never expected to be a part of that.

Once upon a time, a girl named Buffy Summers told my father he could take me home with him, take me away from Sunnydale, from Willow, from the Scoobies, over her dead body. In that moment, she made me family and gave me the one thing I'd only had with my mother - she gave me a place to belong. For the first time in my life, I belonged to more than one person, was loved by everyone around me and enfolded in the arms of family.

You didn't do it because you had to, Buffy. You did it out of love.

Once upon a time, that girl, the Slayer, gave her life to save her sister, to save her friends, to save the world.

Once upon a time... it should have a happy ending. It doesn't.

Instead, we buried the heroine of the tale and tried to figure out how to go on living the lives you left us.

Once upon a time, I brought Willow back to the roof of the dorm. We laid on a quilt my mother had made when she was waiting for her prince to come. We gazed at the stars and Willow wept softly.

"Teach me to name the stars," she asked me.

"You know the names," I reminded her.

She sighed. "Teach me what you call them," she asked again.

So, I pointed them out, naming them with the names of my old friends, showing Willow my mother and catching my breath in my throat as I did it.

"And look," I added, "that one..."

"Orion?" She asked.

I shook my head. "Buffy ... the Slayer," I told her.

"Oh, Tara," Willow sighed.

Once upon a time, you gave us the gift of your death. In time, we will learn to live, if not happily ever after, at least happily as often as we can. In time...

END


	13. Epilogue: I am not There

DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon...etc., etc., etc. ... Mutant Enemy...

so on, so on, and so on ... Bottom line: not mine.

**A/N:** It's been a looooooong time since I wrote in the Buffy fandom. This story is an old one, but, as wasn't around when I started writing fic, I'm posting them here for the first time. Feedback is always welcome, always remembering that much of what you will find in my Buffy fiction was written when the show aired and thus reflects the reality _at that time_. For that reason, some events will not match up with happened on air _after_ I had written a particular story.

**Series notes (please read**): This set of twelve vignettes and an epilogue was written between the 5th and 6th seasons. Each vignette is short and told from the point of view of one of the characters Buffy touched. They can be read in any order.

**I Am Not There (Buffy's Epilogue)**

Willow found the envelope a few weeks after the funeral. It was tucked into one of her spell books. She pushed it aside at first because she figured it was an ingredient for some spell she'd wanted to try. It was the sort of envelope Giles used at the store, after all.

Tara was the one who opened it. "What's this?" she asked, picking the thick packet up, smiling her gentle smile. "Spell stuff?"

Willow shrugged, gazing at the other girl with rapt, unbelieving adoration. It still seemed so hard to believe she was Tara again. She smiled. She sighed. She laughed at Willow's stupid jokes. They cuddled at night and held hands while walking. They apologized in hushed whispers about the fight they'd had before Glory had found Tara. Tara held Willow when the tears over Buffy leaked out, like they did almost every day. Tara rocked her and made up stories about the wonderful place Buffy must be in now.

"Hey," Tara said, exclaiming in her soft way. "It's a letter."

"It is?" Willow asked.

Tara nodded.

"That's weird. It was in my backpack," Wil explained.

Tara looked at it more closely. Her eyes clouded over and her mouth twitched as it tightened. "It - it's from B-B-Buf-Buffy," she stuttered.

Willow stared at her.

"Do you want me to - I could ... it doesn't hurt so much for me, you know?" Tara asked, offering to fulfill this obligation for her lover.

Willow shook her head. "I'll read it." She looked at Tara through eyes already shedding tears.

Tara handed it over. "I'll make some tea," the blonde said.

Willow nodded, hearing the click only distantly as the door shut, as she began to read.

"Dear Wil," it started, "If you're reading this I'm either dead or really lousy at stealing stuff from your backpack. If it's the second one, please stop now and give this back to me, OK?

"But it's not the second one, Wil. Don't ask me how I know it; I just do. Death is my gift and I'm beginning to suspect she didn't mean the death I deal to vamps and other baddies. I only hope it's going to have some meaning."

Willow pulled a tissue from the box near her and murmured, "Oh, Buffy."

"You were my best friend, Wil, the best friend a girl, a Slayer, could have ever had. I don't know what I would have done without you over the years. I'm glad I never had to find out. Even when I was in Los Angeles that summer, I thought of you every day and it made me feel ... not so alone even though I knew you were probably really mad at me. I'm rambling. Sorry. You know that happens when I get nervous.

"I'm about to ask you to do a big favor for me. I know it's going to be hard for you to do. I also know you'll do it. In this envelope are letters for everyone I loved. Will you give them to each person? Please? I don't care if you do it all at once or go around to everyone one at a time. Let Tara help you. (I have a feeling you're going to get her back; you love her too much to let her go, just like how much I love Dawn - ohhhh, please don't check my grammar, OK?). Please?

"One of my mom's friends - from that book group she was in. Remember the one with Pat, who turned into the - sorry, probably not important right now-" Willow stopped with a sob. She could hear Buffy's voice in her head. She took a deep breath. "-right now. Anyway, one of my mom's friends gave me this little poem one day when she stopped by the house after ... afterwards. It's corny, I know, but I think there's something true in it, too, Wil. She gave me a whole bunch of cards with it on them. She said that way I could leave them lying around and just 'find' one whenever I might need it. I seriously questioned my mom's sanity in joining that book group, let me tell you. But you know, it turns out there were enough cards to go with the letters."

Will shook the envelope and a cascade of laminated cards fell out. She picked on up. It was about the size of a playing card, white, printed with pink flowers at the bottom and dark, clear writing in the middle.

Willow read it.

She was lying on her stomach, face in her pillow, when Tara returned with the tea. Tara could see the sobs wracking her girlfriend's body. She said nothing, but went to her and laid down with her, wrapping her arms around her and crooning soft nonsense sounds.

When Willow had ceased crying, she told Tara about Buffy's request. She didn't offer to show her the letter and she never would. She wouldn't be able to read it all herself until later, but it would always be private. All the letters would be.

"What - How should we - I - do this?" Willow stumbled.

Tara brushed sodden hair from Willow's blotched face. "We," she assured her. "And together."

Willow looked at her, eyes round and uncertain. "Are you sure?"

Tara nodded. "You were all stronger together."

Willow smiled for a brief instant. "We're stronger together," she corrected.

Tara blushed. She offered to make phone calls while Willow had some tea and got ready.

They met at the shop. Angel had still been in town, checking on Dawn, helping them clean up the things that came through the portals, so everyone for whom Buffy had left a final message was there. He and Spike glared at one another, but said nothing. They'd more or less behaved since the night Xander had yelled at them, reminding them point blank that Buffy hadn't sacrificed herself so the two of them could spend their time figuring out whose was bigger. Watching both vamps silenced by a boy they regarded with a lot of contempt had been a sight, even if the image Xander's words conjured up was a bit much.

Tara stood next to Willow. Willow took a long, deep breath and let it out with a shaky sigh. "I found something this afternoon. In my bag. Something Buffy put there ... before."

Everyone looked away.

Tara squeezed Willow's hand. "She had a feeling she was going to die," Willow continued. Her voice shook constantly and she had to grip the chair back in front of her to remain upright. She just wanted to get it over with. "She left all of us letters and - um - these little cards. She asked me to give them to you all."

They looked at her again. Everyone looked, if possible, more miserable than before.

"Do you - uh - know what's in 'em?" Xander asked.

Willow shook her head. "Only mine."

Xander nodded once. He figured Willow wouldn't peek, but he wished she would have, just that once. He felt Anya's hand slip into his and he wanted to be alone with her, holding her to him, making love to her, remembering that life is precious. He wanted to be married to her and spend his life with her and never forget Buffy, but didn't know if he could take this. He looked up at Willow. He sighed. He could take it. He had to.

Willow had organized the letters, each enclosed in its own envelope and hastily marked in Buffy's loopy handwriting, alphabetically. She walked to the corner where Angel stood and laid the letter in his hands. Then to a very surprised Anya. Next was Dawn who was weeping audibly. On to Giles. Spike. Tara. And Xander.

Xander looked up again at Willow. "There wasn't one for...?"

Willow shook her head, her gaze falling downward.

Xander nodded and made an indistinct noise of mild surprise.

"She asked me, if he ever came back, to tell him she was sorry," Willow murmured so that only Xander could hear.

Before opening his letter, Xander glanced over at Anya. He thought how Buffy always surprised him. Even in death, the Slayer would reach out and gather her family to her.

"Dear Anya," the girl read, "We've never been close. There's lots of reasons for that. You - former vengeance demon; me - Slayer; kind of on different sides of the whole good and evil thing. For a while. See, a lot of people at Sunnydale High judged me based on one side of me they saw. Or so I thought until Prom night, when I found out sometimes people see more than you think they do; they just have a hard time admitting it.

"You're probably wondering what I'm talking about. Well, for a long time I only saw one side of you. And I didn't trust you. I worried about Xander and his being involved with you. Like Willow, I thought you'd hurt him. Or worse. And then Xander talked some sense into me about Riley. While he was going on about everything I was missing out on and the mistakes I'd made, I realized how much he loves you. I realized you make him happy.

"I think - I hope - that was when I began to see another side of you. I began to see the girl that makes my wonderful friend that happy. I know after so long in your previous life, our lives aren't always easy for you. Believe me, I _know_ about feeling out of place and uncertain of what to do next. I also know you really tried and it was because you love Xander. You love him in the ways and with the intensity he should be loved. I wish I'd had more time to get to know you, to become your friend, because I think you're going to make Xander happy for a very long time and for that, I'm grateful to you."

Anya refolded the letter quietly when she had done. She slumped in the chair and watched Xander's face. From time to time, she glanced at the others.

Tara had taken a seat on the stairs and her hair hid most of her face, but she was crying. The sniffling sounds made it obvious.

"Dear Tara," hers began, "You and I have two important bonds - our mothers died before they should have and we both love Willow. I never really got to thank you for telling me about your mom. It helped me deal with it a little more, knowing, by watching you, that it had to get better, that I could always love her, but my life would have to go on.

"I didn't know you all that well, but I meant it when I told your father you're part of our family. You love Willow and she loves you and that makes you one of us. Please take care of her in the days and weeks and years to come. Whatever happened, she's likely to think she could have done something more. You and I both know that's not true.

"Let her take care of you. She was so lost when Glory hurt you, but she never gave up. She never stopped loving you and she never will.

"I wish I had more to say to you, but I don't think you're the sort who needs lots of words, just the right ones. I hope I've found them."

Had Buffy known that her final gift to Tara, to Anya, would be to make them feel so accepted? Not simply as someone involved with another member of the group, but as a friend, as someone important and special. Tara lifted her eyes and exchanged glances with Anya. Anya's eyes were red. She held up the small card enclosed with the letter and Tara remembered to read it.

Spike had gone out back to read his letter. Being in the same room with Angel was impossible. Besides out here he could smoke without getting glares from the mortals.

"Dear Spike," it started, "Surprised? Don't be. Think maybe your robot wrote this? She didn't. I don't know what to believe anymore. It might even be possible that you do love me and that it isn't a perverse joke by some weird, higher power. I do know that you protect my sister, that you care about her. I've seen you fight for her. I trust you to take care of her. You know that.

"At first, I didn't trust you; I just knew you were the only person physically strong enough to look after her. Then, I asked you to find a way to get us out of Sunnydale after Glory found out about Dawn and you did. I watched you hold a sword in your bare hands so I could get on the roof and fight those lunatic crusaders. I realized I'd trusted you for a lot longer than I cared to admit.

"I know you don't think I love you. I don't. Not in the way you want me to. I don't know if I ever could. I will always love Angel. You know that, too. But, Spike, I have made a place for you in my heart. You have become important to me as more than someone who can help save Dawn. You are what I never imagined myself saying - a friend.

"Dawn, my kid sister but not really, is my heart. If I'm gone, she's all that's left of me. Please stay and protect her. I hope it won't be from Glory; I don't think it will be. But there will be other things that can hurt her - vamps, demons, ogres known as high school boys with too many hormones and not enough manners. Stay and protect her from herself. She listens to you. She adores you. Stay because you once loved a blond Slayer and in Dawn's heart, you'll always find that girl."

Spike crushed out the cigarette he'd lit but never smoked. He looked into the night sky and wondered if she could see them all. He shook his head once and covered his face with his hand briefly. The stars above doubled and trebled as he looked at them anew, prismed through watery eyes. Slowly, he brought the fingers of one hand to his lips and kissed them softly. He lowered his hand on a diagonal and imagined the light touch of sentiment floating into the heavens, hoping it found her.

Dawn stared at her letter for a long time, unable to open it, unwilling to set it on the table in front of her. She watched the others, followed Spike out with her eyes and she glared at her name on the stiff envelope in her hands. Anya, sitting closest to Dawn, reached over and took one of Dawn's hands in hers. Dawn looked up and found Anya's watery smile reassuring. Dawn raised an eyebrow in mute questioning. Anya nodded slowly. Dawn took a deep breath and opened the envelope.

"Dear Dawn," it started, "I'm sorry. Sorry for all the times I yelled at you, teased you, ignored you, or said all the things big sisters say to little sisters. I'm sorry I didn't tell you myself about the Key stuff and I wish I knew how to fix it. I know what it's like to have this weird, mystical 'destiny' in your life, to not be a kid anymore, to wish everything was like it used to be. I'm sorry I can't make it all better, Dawnie.

"I hope if you're reading this it means Glory is gone and you're safe. You have my friends - our friends. And Giles. They'll take care of you and love you, but I wish I could have been there to watch you grow up, to see what you're going to make of your life. I'm sorry I'll miss all of it.

But Dawn, no matter what happens, or has happened, look inside yourself and I'll always be there. I promise.

I love you, little sister."

Dawn closed her eyes and laid her head on the table. Anya brushed her hair gently and listened as Dawn wept.

Angel stood in the same corner he'd been in, face stoic, back straight. He watched Buffy's friends read their letters, but, like Dawn, he hesitated to read his. It was goodbye, too real, too hard, too impossible to think somewhere inside she'd known what was going to happen and yet had found the strength to leave them all letters.

He looked down at his name, written in her distinct hand, written by the love of his life at a moment when she believed she was facing her own death. He owed it to Buffy to find the strength to read the words she'd had the courage to write.

He began reading. "Dear Angel, I guess they don't make forever like they used to, do they? I always thought I'd live long enough to find some way to be with you always. I guess this Slayer destiny of mine didn't include that in the package.

"I never stopped loving you. Did you ever expect me to? But I understand now why you left. And it's OK. Really. I've grown and changed and learned so much about myself. I think I've had a chance to become the girl you always said was incredible. I wish I could have shared her with you.

"For over a year now, I've been having this dream, this great dream where you were human and we were together. Life felt perfect, just like I'd always wanted it to. We laid in your bed and ate ice cream and peanut butter and chocolate and laughed. There were smiles and tears and ... everything there should have been. It was the best dream of my life and I never would have had it if I hadn't known you. Even with everything we went through, I'd never trade that for anything. Angel, there's so much more I want to say, but I can't find the words and I feel like I'm running out of time.

Whatever happens, I always loved you and I always will."

Angel folded the letter and slipped into his coat pocket. He glanced around the room, saw her friends, aching, mourning, remembering, watched her sister crying. He slipped out the back door and past Spike, whose eyes followed Angel as the dark vamp walked down the alley.

"Leaving so soon?" Spike called out.

"Don't start, Spike," Angel growled.

Spike looked at the pile of cigarette butts at his own feet.

Angel stopped. "She hated you," he informed Spike, not turning around, letting his voice ricochet off the walls.

"No, mate, she didn't," Spike told him. "Even trusted her baby sister to me."

"I'll never understand that," Angel protested.

Spike smiled to himself. "_You_ don't have to," he said. "You can get on back to your mates in Los Angeles and I'll keep watching out over the ones here."

"Why doesn't that make me feel any better?" Angel asked.

Spike shook his head. "It's not about you; it's about them. You seen them asking old Spike to leave?"

"They're grieving," Angel said.

"Nah, they know I was there, know I fought just as hard as they did. They know which side I'm on."

Angel snorted. "For how long?"

"Just what I told Buffy - until the end of the world," Spike answered.

Angel shook his head and began walking down the alley again.

"Where you going?" Spike called after him.

"To kill something."

"Yeah? Try Rest Haven. Rumor says there's a nest there," Spike told him.

Angel turned, face vamped out. "I'd rather try this alley, Spike, but for some unbelievable reason, those people in there would probably get mad at me."

Spike grinned maliciously.

Angel turned around and strode away. Spike lit another cigarette and chuckled bitterly to himself. Glancing down at the letter still clutched in his free hand, he muttered, "I'd let the poof stake me if it'd bring you back."

Giles had gone into the training room to read his letter. He sat where he'd sat with her the last time. The speed bag still lay, chain links twisted and broken, on the floor. It looked uncomfortably like a body. He rested his head against the wall for long, quiet moments, hearing her in his head, hearing that ominous, defeated, unassailable "If Dawn dies, I'm done. I quit." If only ... not that he would have wanted to sacrifice Dawn, but ...

He sighed and opened the envelope, smiling softly at the handwriting it had taken his proper British eyes months to understand.

"Dear Giles," she had written, "There was a time when I wished I'd never met you, didn't want you to be a part of my life. I didn't want to be the Slayer, didn't want all the stuff that came with it, didn't want to follow your rules, or listen to speeches and criticisms and all the rest. That time is so long ago now, I can't even believe it was me.

"I love you, Giles, like you were my dad. You've been my father through more important life stuff than my own father and I wouldn't have made it this far without you. No one else has given up as much for me as you have. No one else put up with so much, either - the teasing over the years, the lack-of-rule following, and lots of other things I wish I could take back. But you were always there, never let me down, even when it ended up costing you your post as Watcher.

"We both knew this day would come, even though we've never wanted to say it. By all rights, it should have come four years ago, but I cheated it. We cheated it. You let me do what no Slayer had ever done - have friends and those friends saved me, saved us. It bought me years I wasn't supposed to have and, even if it hasn't always been obvious, I've appreciated them.

"Take care of my sister and my friends. We all think we're very grown up, but you're the only real grown-up. Even Spike ... and Angel. They never had a chance to grow up, not really. Please make sure they all have a chance to get old gracefully, just like you gave me time I wouldn't have had with any other Watcher.

"I will always love you..."

Giles pulled his glasses off and brushed tears from his eyes. Had she understood, in the garage in the desert? He'd thought he would die and he'd tried to tell her. She had meant the world to him, had been the daughter he would never have. He felt now it was not too late - she had understood.

He glanced down at the card she'd enclosed and began to read it.

Still sitting next to Anya, reaching out to stroke her hand every so often, Xander read Buffy's letter with great deliberateness. She'd never been one for communicating in writing, so her doing this meant that much more.

"Dear Xan, Do me a favor - go to Belgium some day, OK?" went the first sentence. Xander smiled a small smile in spite of himself. "I'm serious - take Anya and go see whatever there is to see in Belgium. 'Cause I'm not going to get to.

"I couldn't have done this, been the Slayer, without you. I hope you know that. You were always there no matter what, always backed me up, even when you didn't agree with me. You kept me honest, made me see when I'd really screwed up, and always forgave me in the end. Those were your gifts to me. I want you to know I always valued them, even if I didn't say it often enough.

"I love you, Xan. You and Wil. Was there ever anything the three of us couldn't get through together?

"You gave some advice a few months ago. It didn't work out for me, but I realized something. The only reason you could talk to me about Riley the way you did is because of how much you love Anya. A long time ago, I may have been the love of your youth, but she is the love of your life. I'm so happy for you, happy that you found her. Don't let her go, Xan. Be happy. Promise me. Have and do all the things I was never meant to have.

"Most people don't get one amazing, incredible, true best friend in their lives. I got two. I'll always love you."

Xander closed his eyes and saw her as she had once been and always would be in his memory: beautiful, vibrant, strong. Loving her had hurt, but it had taught him to see people for what's really inside and not just what he wanted to see. He was no longer afraid of what life had to offer because in her short life she had shown him how to get the best out of the worst a person could face. He glanced at Anya, then turned toward Willow.

Willow smiled softly at him.

She had finished her letter before meeting them all and didn't feel up to re-reading it yet. But she thought of it, thought of Buffy's final words, the ones meant just for her after Buffy had asked her favor.

It had continued, "I love you, Wil. You were the first real friend I ever had and you mean the world to me. Without you, without Xander, I would have given up a long time ago. I kind of hoped that the three of us would get old together, maybe learn to play Bridge, go to dinner at four in the afternoon, and wash our fake teeth together at night. Grow old for me, Wil. Take care of each other, all of you. That was supposed to be my job, but a long time ago, you and Xander changed that. You took care of me just as much as I ever did of you.

"I love you, Wil. Always."

Willow gazed around at all of them, returning slowly to the table. Giles had walked in from the training room, moving as though he'd been beaten, face pale and grim. Spike sat in his accustomed perch, looking down the table at everyone. He met Willow's eyes and nodded briefly at her. Tara had come back and was sitting in a chair close to Willow. Xander had moved closer to Anya and held her hand gently, rubbing her fingers with an absent minded tenderness. Dawn no longer wept, but her head remained down, her hair still stroked slowly by Anya's free hand. Angel came in the back door, looking more grim than Giles, in full on brood mode. His hands looked dusty. He looked at Willow, then looked away.

"Sunnydale a bit safer now, eh mate?" Spike asked.

"A bit," retorted Angel with thinly veiled menace in his voice.

"Could you two not?" Xander asked tiredly.

Both vamps looked down at the floor. Whatever they each muttered was lost and no one cared to ask.

Everyone was silent, looking around uncomfortably.

At last, Giles spoke, "She's right, you know."

Most of them looked puzzled.

Tara answered the mute questions. "Everything that made her Buffy isn't in that grave."

They looked from Tara to Giles.

"Everything that made Buffy who she was is in this room," Giles told them. "In our memories and in our hearts. That was what she was telling all of us."

Heads nodded. Eyes filled with tears. And deep within, in each of them, hearts mended the tiniest bit.

END

The poem Buffy gave to her friends:

Do not stand at my grave and weep.

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry.

I am there; I did not die


End file.
